roTextureManager

The roTextureManager is faster, because it creates the bitmap asynchronously. It will also manage its own memory usage with its built-in LRU routine, but it gets tricky if you keep references to the bitmaps it creates open elsewhere and/or create bitmaps outside of it. It also seems a little unpredictable when used with video playing. It's perfect for applications like your grid sample, as you can display loading bitmaps while loading the real bitmaps asynchronously with much lower impact on your framerate.

It'd be even better if you could call GetBitmap() on the roTextureRequest with a GetState() of 4/Ready, instead of having to listen for the roTextureRequestEvents and keep track of it separately by request ID, but hey ho...

"TheEndless" wrote:


It'd be even better if you could call GetBitmap() on the roTextureRequest with a GetState() of 4/Ready, instead of having to listen for the roTextureRequestEvents and keep track of it separately by request ID, but hey ho...

Yes wondered that myself. Tganks

Does anybody have an example of using the roTextureRequest and Manager in the background? I have it setup to create loading bitmaps first of all the data, but having trouble figuring out how to kick off and let the real images fill in as they are ready. Thanks.

"Greg47" wrote:
Does anybody have an example of using the roTextureRequest and Manager in the background? I have it setup to create loading bitmaps first of all the data, but having trouble figuring out how to kick off and let the real images fill in as they are ready. Thanks.

That's where being able to pull the bitmap directly from the roTextureRequest would come in really handy. Probably the best way to do it would be to share the message port, so you can listen for roTextureRequestEvents while you're listening for roUniversalControlEvents from your screen.

Alternatively, you could assign two different ports and check them both (with GetMessage()) on each pass through your event loop.

While True
    textureMsg = m.TextureMgr.GetMessagePort().GetMessage()
    If textureMsg <> invalid Then
        ...
    End If
    screenMsg = m.Screen.GetMessagePort().GetMessage()
    If screenMsg <> invalid Then
        ...
    End If
End While

"TheEndless" wrote:

"Greg47" wrote:
Does anybody have an example of using the roTextureRequest and Manager in the background? I have it setup to create loading bitmaps first of all the data, but having trouble figuring out how to kick off and let the real images fill in as they are ready. Thanks.

That's where being able to pull the bitmap directly from the roTextureRequest would come in really handy. Probably the best way to do it would be to share the message port, so you can listen for roTextureRequestEvents while you're listening for roUniversalControlEvents from your screen.

Yeah that was the approach I was thinking of and was doing too. Just sharing the same port between the two. I'm creating the dummy bitmaps first to draw out the layout quickly and then I'm trying to figure out how to replace the dummy ones as the images finish downloading. I can kick off the request perfectly fine doing something like:

function getItems(textureManager As Object) As Object
    items = CreateObject("roArray", 25, true)
    for i = 0 to 25

        bitmap = CreateObject("roBitmap", {width: width, height: height, AlphaEnable: true})      
        bitmap.Clear( &h222835FF )

        request = CreateObject("roTextureRequest", "external url")
        textureManager.RequestTexture(request)

        items.Push(bitmap)
      
    end for
    return items
end function

But then I'm struggling to figure out how to connect the requested bitmap back to the items array. I thought I could maybe get the request event id's and then connect that back to the item array index, but it does't seem that the event id is kicked off on every single item. It seems like it doesn't actually get the id until the async is complete. And maybe I'm trying to kick off the download in the wrong spot. Thanks for any help.

"Greg47" wrote:
But then I'm struggling to figure out how to connect the requested bitmap back to the items array. I thought I could maybe get the request event id's and then connect that back to the item array index, but it does't seem that the event id is kicked off on every single item. It seems like it doesn't actually get the id until the async is complete. And maybe I'm trying to kick off the download in the wrong spot. Thanks for any help.

The roTextureRequest.GetID() matches the roTextureRequestEvent.GetID(), so you should use that to link the two.

"TheEndless" wrote:

"Greg47" wrote:
But then I'm struggling to figure out how to connect the requested bitmap back to the items array. I thought I could maybe get the request event id's and then connect that back to the item array index, but it does't seem that the event id is kicked off on every single item. It seems like it doesn't actually get the id until the async is complete. And maybe I'm trying to kick off the download in the wrong spot. Thanks for any help.

The roTextureRequest.GetID() matches the roTextureRequestEvent.GetID(), so you should use that to link the two.

Thanks. I was thinking the id wasn't there until after the event request triggered, but it is there before so that helps a lot. Thanks.