Class TCastleApplication

DescriptionHierarchyFieldsMethodsProperties

Unit

Declaration

type TCastleApplication = class(TComponent)

Description

Application, managing all open TCastleWindowBase (OpenGL windows). This tracks all open instances of TCastleWindowBase and implements message loop. It also handles some global tasks like managing the screen (changing current screen resolution and/or bit depth etc.)

The only instance of this class should be in Application variable. Don't create any other instances of class TCastleApplication, there's no point in doing that.

Hierarchy

  • TComponent
  • TCastleApplication

Overview

Fields

Public VideoResize: boolean;
Public VideoResizeWidth: integer;
Public VideoResizeheight: integer;

Methods

Public function VideoSettingsDescribe: string;
Public function TryVideoChange: boolean;
Public procedure VideoChange(OnErrorWarnUserAndContinue: boolean);
Public procedure VideoReset;
Public function ScreenHeight: integer;
Public function ScreenWidth: integer;
Public function OpenWindowsCount: integer;
Public function ProcessMessage(WaitForMessage, WaitToLimitFPS: boolean): boolean;
Public function ProcessAllMessages: boolean;
Public procedure Quit;
Public procedure Run;
Public function BackendName: string;
Public constructor Create(AOwner: TComponent); override;
Public destructor Destroy; override;

Properties

Public property XDisplayName: string read FXDisplayName write FXDisplayName;
Public property VideoColorBits: integer read FVideoColorBits write FVideoColorBits default 0;
Public property VideoFrequency: Cardinal read FVideoFrequency write FVideoFrequency default 0;
Public property OpenWindows[Index:integer]: TCastleWindowBase read GetOpenWindows;
Public property OnUpdate: TUpdateFunc read FOnUpdate write FOnUpdate;
Public property OnIdle: TUpdateFunc read FOnUpdate write FOnUpdate; deprecated;
Public property OnTimer: TProcedure read FOnTimer write FOnTimer;
Public property TimerMilisec: Cardinal read FTimerMilisec write FTimerMilisec default 1000;
Published property LimitFPS: Single read FLimitFPS write FLimitFPS default DefaultLimitFPS;

Description

Fields

Public VideoResize: boolean;

If VideoResize, then next VideoChange call will try to resize the screen to given VideoResizeWidth / VideoResizeHeight. Otherwise, next TryVideoChange and VideoChange will use default screen size.

Public VideoResizeWidth: integer;
 
Public VideoResizeheight: integer;
 

Methods

Public function VideoSettingsDescribe: string;

Describe the changes recorded in variables VideoXxx, used by VideoChange and TryVideoChange. This is a multiline string, each line is indented by 2 spaces, always ends with CastleUtils.NL.

Public function TryVideoChange: boolean;

Change the screen size, color bits and such, following the directions you set in VideoColorBits, VideoResize, VideoResizeWidth / VideoResizeHeight, and VideoFrequency variables. Returns True if success.

Public procedure VideoChange(OnErrorWarnUserAndContinue: boolean);

Change the screen size, color bits and such, following the directions you set in VideoColorBits, VideoResize, VideoResizeWidth / VideoResizeHeight, and VideoFrequency variables. This actually just calls TryVideoChange and checks the result.

If not success: if OnErrorWarnUserAndContinue then we'll display a warning and continue. If not OnErrorWarnUserAndContinue then we'll raise an Exception.

Exceptions raised
Exception
If video mode change failed, and OnErrorWarnUserAndContinue = false.
Public procedure VideoReset;

Return default screen video mode. If you never called TryVideoChange (with success), then this does nothing. This is automatically called in Application.Destroy, so at finalization of this unit. This way your game nicely restores screen resolution for user.

Public function ScreenHeight: integer;
 
Public function ScreenWidth: integer;
 
Public function OpenWindowsCount: integer;

List of all open windows.

Public function ProcessMessage(WaitForMessage, WaitToLimitFPS: boolean): boolean;

Process messages from the window system. You have to call this repeatedly to process key presses, mouse events, redraws and everything else. Messages are processed and appropriate window callbacks are called, like TCastleWindowBase.OnDraw, TCastleWindowBase.OnUpdate, TCastleWindowBase.OnKeyPress and many others.

For simple programs calling the Run method is usually the best solution, Run just calls ProcessMessage in a loop. Manually using the ProcessMessage method allows you to implement modal dialog boxes (generally any kind of "display something until something happens" behavior). Make your own event loop like this:

  while not SomethingHappened do
    Application.ProcessMessages(...);

Often this is used together with TGLMode, TGLModeFrozenScreen and similar utilities from CastleWindowModes unit. They allow you to temporarily replace window callbacks with new ones, and later restore the original ones. This is useful for behavior similar to modal dialog boxes.

Returns True if we should continue, that is if Quit method was not called (directly or by closing the last window). If you want to check it (if you allow the user at all to close the application during modal box or such) you can do:

  while not SomethingHappened do
    if not Application.ProcessMessage(...) then
      Break;

Do not assume too much about message processing internals. For example, not all ProcessMessage calls cause redraw, even if redraw is requested by PostRedisplay. When we have messages to process, we generally don't call redraw or even OnUpdate.

Parameters
WaitForMessage
If True (and some other conditions are met, for example we do not have to call OnUpdate continuosly) then we can block, waiting for an event to process.

Set this to True whenever you can, that is whenever your program only responds to user inputs (as opposed to making some operations, like animation or loading or ray-tracing something). Generally, when SomethingHappened from the example pseudo-code above can only be changed by user events (e.g. user has to click something; nothing happens if user doesn't click for 5 minutes or 5 hours). This allows to let OS and CPU have some rest, and spend time on other applications, or just sleep and conserve laptop battery power.

WaitToLimitFPS
If True, then we have backup mechanism for limiting CPU usage. When WaitForMessage mechanism cannot be used (becasue WaitForMessage is False or some other conditions disallow it), and user doesn't throw events at us (we don't want to sleep when user produces many events e.g. by mouse move), then we can do a small sleep to stabilize number of ProcessMessage calls at LimitFPS per second.

Set this to True whenever you can, that is whenever you don't need ProcessMessage to return as fast as it can. For example, when you're displaying some animation, then displaying LimitFPS frames should be enough. OTOH, if you really do something that should be done as fast as possible (like loading some file or ray-tracing) you probably have to set this to False.

Public function ProcessAllMessages: boolean;

Processes all pending messages.

Contrast this with ProcessMessage method, that processes only a single event. Or no event at all (when no events were pending and AllowSuspend = False). This means that after calling ProcessMessage once, you may have many messages left in the queue (especially mouse move together with key presses typically makes a lot of events). So it's not good to use if you want to react timely to some user requests, e.g. when you do something time-consuming and allow user to break the task with Escape key.

ProcessAllMessages is like calling in a loop something like ProcessMessage(false), ends when ProcessMessage didn't process any message (it's internally returned by ProcessMessage2) or when quit was called (or last window closed).

So ProcessAllMessages makes sure we have processed all pending events, thus we are up-to-date with window system requests.

Public procedure Quit;

Close all open windows, make ProcessMessage return False, finish the Run method (if working), and thus finish the application work.

Public procedure Run;

Run the program using TCastleWindowBase, by doing the event loop. Think of it as just a shortcut for "while ProcessMessage do ;".

Note that this does nothing if OpenWindowsCount = 0, that is there are no open windows. Besides the obvious reason (you didn't call TCastleWindowBase.Open on any window...) this may also happen if you called Close (or Application.Quit) from your window OnOpen / OnResize callback. In such case no event would probably reach our program, and user would have no chance to quit, so Run just refuses to work and exits immediately without any error.

Public function BackendName: string;
 
Public constructor Create(AOwner: TComponent); override;
 
Public destructor Destroy; override;
 

Properties

Public property XDisplayName: string read FXDisplayName write FXDisplayName;

Set XDisplay name, this will be used for all TCastleWindowBase that will be subsequently initialized by TCastleWindowBase.Open.

Note that this is exposed by GTK even for non-XWindows platforms, but I don't know what it does there.

Public property VideoColorBits: integer read FVideoColorBits write FVideoColorBits default 0;

Color bits per pixel that will be set by next VideoChange call, and that are tried to be used at TCastleWindowBase.Open. Zero means that system default is used.

Public property VideoFrequency: Cardinal read FVideoFrequency write FVideoFrequency default 0;

Video frequency to set in next VideoChange call. Leave as 0 to use system default.

Public property OpenWindows[Index:integer]: TCastleWindowBase read GetOpenWindows;
 
Public property OnUpdate: TUpdateFunc read FOnUpdate write FOnUpdate;

Continously occuring event.

See also
TCastleWindowBase.OnUpdate.
Continously occuring event, called for all open windows.
Public property OnIdle: TUpdateFunc read FOnUpdate write FOnUpdate; deprecated;

Warning: this symbol is deprecated.

Deprecated name for OnUpdate.

Public property OnTimer: TProcedure read FOnTimer write FOnTimer;

Event called approximately after each TimerMilisec miliseconds. The actual delay may be larger than TimerMilisec miliseconds, depending on how the program (and OS) is busy.

You can of course change TimerMilisec (and OnTimer) even when some windows are already open.

Public property TimerMilisec: Cardinal read FTimerMilisec write FTimerMilisec default 1000;
 
Published property LimitFPS: Single read FLimitFPS write FLimitFPS default DefaultLimitFPS;

Limit the number of (real) frames per second, to not hog the CPU. Set to zero to not limit.

To be more precise, this limits the number of TCastleApplication.ProcessMessage calls per second, in situations when we do not have to process any user input. So we limit not only rendering (TCastleWindowBase.OnDraw) but also other animation processing (TCastleWindowBase.OnUpdate) calls per second. See TCastleApplication.ProcessMessage.

In case of CastleWindow backends when we have to fight with event clogging (right now only LCL backend, used by default only on Mac OS X) this is also the "desired number of FPS": we make sure that even when application is clogged with events (like when dragging with mouse), we call update (TCastleWindowBase.OnUpdate) and (if necessary) draw (TCastleWindowBase.OnDraw and related) at least as often. When LimitFPS is used for this purpose ("desired number of FPS"), it is also capped (by MaxDesiredFPS = 100.0).


Generated by PasDoc 0.13.0 on 2013-08-17 21:27:15