How would a game loop work?

[Sarah Reichelt]

> What strikes me about rev is that it's harder to manage a flow of  
> things from a main loop. For example, a game might have a  
> particular loop for overall control which steps through all the  
> required stages and then draws a new frame, starting the whole  
> thing off again. How would you best manage a game in rev? Would you  
> have a loop off a 'start game' button which could only be  
> interrupted by the quit action? Just wondering how others have  
> approached laying out games and such programs?

I would use the "send in time" structure. Have your main game loop in  
a single handler. Starting the game would call this main loop, which  
could look something like this:

on mainGameLoop
   -- draw screen etc

   send "mainGameLoop" to me in 1 tick
end mainGameLoop

The "send" command is non-clocking, so any user input can be seen &  
processed in other handlers or scripts, while the main loop keeps  
happening effectively in the background.

Scott Rossi at Tactile Media has some excellent examples of this.

Cheers,
Sarah