I initialize the DX-Stuff at the very beginning (that does not take much time). Then i Blt a splash screen to the Primary Buffer before loading the gameart.

I think what babar_zafar is trying to do with the swap file is to touch the data and force windows to commit some physical memory for the data. This is a common optimization to minimize page faults. When you allocate memory in Windows, Windows will allocate a set of virtual memory pages to satisfiy the request without actualy commiting any physical memory. When you write data to memory windows will then commit a physical page of memory. However, this alone will not ensure that windows will not swap the commited pages back out to disk immediatly. You have to trick Windows into thinking the data is being used frequently. This can be done by "touching" the data, by performing reads of your data in the newly allocated memory block. Windows will then think that the memory is being used frequently, will commit physical memory, and will mark it so that the virtual memory system will be less likely to swap it to disk. This doesn't subvert the swap file at all. The memory allocated by the active process always has a higher priority than memory allocated by other process so switching to another app is not a problem. It can cuase a switch to another app to be slower because the newly active app has to bring it's data into physical memory from the swap file, but Windows is designed to handle that.

Just a little clarification.

Edited by - bstach on 1/21/00 3:19:10 PM

If you take a look, many game have a loading time before it start, but they put an image, or better a bar tath show the progress. Try to do the same, a simple image is better than a empty screen!