CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++multithreadingc++11sfml
Böller
Böller

Reputation: 11

How do you control a SFML window from a separate thread?

I'm currently working on a game where I wanted to create a loading screen that basically shows the process of loading all the resources. To do this, I decided to create a separate thread that handles the window. I'm aware that there could be more efficient solutions, but I wanted to create a special mouse cursor and that way was the only way that allowed me to do that without having a buggy mouse when the application is loading a big file.

I read up on the threads on the SFML tutorial page and I learned that I have to do window.setActive(false) in the main thread and then window.setActive(true) in the separate thread in order to have access to the window in the separate thread without getting any problems. This works fine, it doesn't throw any errors and it displays the loading screen very nicely. However, I can't move the window around or interact with it in any way. The mouse cursor is covered by the blue ring from the mouse when it's loading, and I can neither close nor move nor resize the window even though I used sf::Style::Default, so it should be possible.

Can anyone help me out here?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 786

Answers (1)

nvoigt
nvoigt

Reputation: 77294

You have it backwards. You blocked the main thread with loading your resources and created a new thread to keep the UI responsive. Not only is that not going to go well in the long term, but in the short term, your operating system still thinks your app is blocked, because the main thread is unresponsive. The OS does not know you created a second thread to keep the user entertained.

You should instead keep the responsive UI on the main thread and create an extra thread for doing the heavy lifting and blocking work. This way you don't have to struggle with your graphics library all the way (and it does not matter whether that's SFML, because they all do this) plus your operating system will not behave as if you blocked your application.

Upvotes: 3

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