Display text on the splash screen on initial startup to indicate that shaders will be cached

[Calinou]

Related to godotengine/godot#27847.

Describe the project you are working on

The Godot editor 🙂

Describe the problem or limitation you are having in your project

Due to more complex shaders being used, starting Godot (or a project exported with Godot) for the first time is expected to take longer when using the Vulkan renderer. It can take upwards of 10 seconds on some hardware, and no visual feedback is currently provided (especially if running in fullscreen).

Describe the feature / enhancement and how it helps to overcome the problem or limitation

Display a message on the splash screen when starting the editor or a project for the first time:

Precaching shaders for initial run, please wait...

This is the most reliable solution which can work on any platform. Simply printing to the console doesn't suffice here, as projects exported in release mode do not display a console window (and it won't be visible in fullscreen either). Likewise, changing the window title temporarily won't result in a visible difference in fullscreen.

Describe how your proposal will work, with code, pseudo-code, mock-ups, and/or diagrams

In the splash screen code, the engine isn't fully initialized yet. This means a low-level approach will have to be used, such as displaying a bitmap image that contains text on top of the splash image. To avoid conflicts between custom splash images and the precaching text, the text's location can be made customizable with a project setting.

Translating the message may also prove difficult, but it's not critical for a message that's only displayed once.

If this enhancement will not be used often, can it be worked around with a few lines of script?

No, as this happens in the splash screen code which can't be extended via a script.

Is there a reason why this should be core and not an add-on in the asset library?

See above.