Streaming resources (Slick2D)

Question

I'm writing a game using the Slick2D library. I recently added a loading screen using deferred loading. I use the Music class to load OGG files to be used as music. These take an excessive amount of time to load. I looked on the wiki for more information on deferred loading. I found:

No one resource should take so long to load that it keeps the screen from refreshing for a significant amount of time (if it does, then the resource should probably be streamed anyway :)).

So I altered my menu class as follows (this is just an example and I'm leaving out quite a bit):

public class MainMenu extends BasicGameState{
private Music[] theme = new Music[1];
public void init(GameContainer gameContainer, StateBasedGame stateBasedGame) throws SlickException{
    InputStream[] musicStream = {ResourceLoader.getResourceAsStream("/path/to/theme1.ogg")}
    try{
        theme[0] = new Music(musicStream[0],"path/to/theme1.ogg");
    }catch (Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace;
    }
}
(rest of class)

The music array is an array of org.newdawn.slick.Music

So I thought I'd done what would reduce loading time. However, when loading, it took just as long, but instead of showing a file as the current resource, it showed the stream.

I'd like to know how to do one or both of the following:

Stream a resource to reduce loading time as the wiki suggests.
Load only selected resources and load more when changing states (load the game music only when entering game state, etc.).

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 13 '13 at 15:49

I accidentally came across the answer.

public void init(GameContainer gc, StateBasedGame game) throws SlickException{
    try{
        theme[0] = new Music("path/to/theme1.ogg",true);
    }catch (Exception e){
        e.printStackTrace;
    }
}

Adding true after the file reference indicates that you want to stream the audio.

Streaming resources (Slick2D)

1 Answers1