Comment by badsectoracula
7 years ago
Reminds me when i was a kid and was writing some GUI shell like Windows 3.1 (it only looked like it, of course, it was really just DOS programs :-P). I used a 386 and WfW 3.11 and Windows took a long time to run. Mine launched instantly and it felt "cheap". So to make it look more serious i added a loop that created and deleted files with small random delays inbetween and a progress bar that filled :-P. This way i got both a progress bar and a slower startup with hard disk noises like the serious programs had :-) (FWIW I remember adding the random delays because if you had smartdrv with write caching it would just flyby but also because a smooth progress bar felt fake :-P).
Cool story. I had a similar experience as a kid, when I designed the most elaborate splash screen only to notice it was shown only for a split second before the main window came up.
I notice that with Minetest, which is essentially an open-source Minecraft clone. I can go from desktop to walking around ingame in about 3 seconds (and my system is not actually particularly powerful).
As a result, it's sort of become my short-work-break game and I keep on thinking that I would play a "real game", if I ever have the time for it.