Next-Gen Display Splash Screen | C++ - c++

Question

Is there anyway to display a splash screen without the window? Like just the image pops up for a few seconds, then after that shows a dialog box asking the player if he/she wants to create a new project or open one. I know, two questions in one. I am using Visual Studio right now.
Thanks!

Answer 1

You mean like:
Code Blocks:
Photoshop:
Or even, the very program you're using, Visual Studio:
Other ones include anything in the Adobe suite, and anything in the office suite, just off the top of my head.
So, obviously the answer is yes. The way to do this is to create a borderless window. With C++, this seems to be a bit difficult. I would highly suggest sticking to a rectangle splash screen, unless you want to handle the paint events to draw whatever is below you, which is a pain.
I found a how-to over here at Programmers Heaven, which is below so it's also on this site per SO guidelines.
The other option, is to simply use C#, which makes this kind of thing really easy.
First Create a window with the WS_POPUP flag
Also - When creating your window take into account the fact that the system will likely still want to draw the border and title bar etc... so calculate that into your window dimensions as follows
#define WINDOW_WIDTH 300 // whatever size you need
#define WINDOW_HEIGHT 256
// Calculate the proper size for the window given a client
DWORD dwFrameWidth = GetSystemMetrics( SM_CXSIZEFRAME );
DWORD dwFrameHeight = GetSystemMetrics( SM_CYSIZEFRAME );
DWORD dwMenuHeight = GetSystemMetrics( SM_CYMENU );
DWORD gdwWindowXPos = ( GetSystemMetrics( SM_CXSCREEN ) - WINDOW_WIDTH ) / 2;
DWORD gdwWindowYPos = ( GetSystemMetrics( SM_CYSCREEN ) - WINDOW_HEIGHT ) / 2;
DWORD gdwWindowWidth = WINDOW_WIDTH + dwFrameWidth * 2;
DWORD gdwWindowHeight = WINDOW_HEIGHT + dwFrameHeight * 2 + dwMenuHeight;
You should then have something like this for your window creation:
HWND hwnd = CreateWindowEx(0,
"Class Name",
"Window Name",
WS_POPUP, // and any other flags you need
gdwWindowXPos, // these just center the
gdwWindowYPos, // window on the screen
gdwWindowWidth, // Calculated width
gdwWindowHeight, // and height
NULL, // Parent window
NULL, // Menu (don't want one)
hInst, // hInstance
NULL // Other Parameters
);
... Right ....
The next thing is to set the window region, so that you only draw the area you're interested in by using CreateRectRgn, and SetWindowRgn like so:
HRGN hrgn = CreateRectRgn( 0, 0, WINDOW_WIDTH, WINDOW_HEIGHT );
SetWindowRgn( hwnd, hrgn, TRUE );
This clips the window to the size I wanted when I #defined WINDOW_WIDTH and WINDOW_HEIGHT