ludic/docs/language/app/app-splash_hide.md
Orkuncakilkaya be74b4de6f feat(bundle): ship a game as a macOS .app, with a splash it controls
`ludic build` produces a program. Double-clicked it opens a Terminal window, it
wears the generic executable icon, it calls itself whatever the file is called,
and it carries none of its assets. `ludic bundle` produces an application.

Everything it needs is in package.ludic, so the command takes no arguments: an
Info.plist and PkgInfo from `app` lines, an .icns built by sips and iconutil at
all ten sizes macOS asks for from a single source PNG, the asset pack in
Contents/Resources, and an ad-hoc signature - which is not optional on Apple
silicon, where an unsigned binary is killed rather than warned about. The bundle
identifier falls back to the package path reversed, so a project that never
thinks about it still gets a defensible one instead of two apps sharing a key
Launch Services hangs the Dock, saved state and permissions off.

A bundled game is moved to ~/Library/Application Support/<name> before main,
because Finder starts a .app with its working directory at "/" where no save
could ever be written. Reads come out of the pack, writes land somewhere real
and per-user, and the game's save code needs no change and no platform
knowledge.

The splash is the other half of looking like an application. A game that loads
165 MB spends a visible moment doing it with nothing on screen, which from the
outside is indistinguishable from a launch that failed. splash_show puts a
borderless window up from the same constructor that mounts the pack - before
main, so it appears while the process is still starting rather than after the
slow part it exists to cover - and reads the artwork out of the pack like any
other asset. It turns the run loop enough times to be mapped and composited
there and then; once composited the backing store survives a busy main thread,
so it stays up for the whole load.

Nothing hides it automatically. Only the game knows when its first real frame is
ready, and a splash that vanishes before that leaves the same black gap it was
covering, so the game calls App.splash_hide(). Headless there is no splash and
the call lowers to nothing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-09-10 16:57:27 +03:00

1.1 KiB

id name category kind tokens sig tip order ns member
app-splash_hide App.splash_hide app namespace-method App.splash_hide App.splash_hide() -> void Dismiss the boot splash. 1 App splash_hide

Dismisses the boot splash. Safe to call when there is no splash, and safe to call twice.

A bundled game shows a splash while it starts: ludic bundle records app splash from the manifest into the bundle, and the runtime puts it on screen before main runs, out of the asset pack. Nothing takes it down on its own, because nothing else knows when the game has a first frame worth showing - a splash that disappears while the terrain is still loading leaves the same black gap it was there to cover.

So the game says when:

program MyGame {
  entry {
    load_the_world()          # the slow part the splash is covering
    open_the_window()
    draw_one_frame()
    App.splash_hide()         # ...and only now
  }
}

Headless there is no splash and no window, and the call lowers to nothing.

See also: shipping a game.