Pause in OpenGL, but don't stop drawing... ?

I've made a version of 2D Asteroids using OpenGL on a *nix system.

I'm wondering how, after the player has cleared the field of rocks, to pause the game prior to displaying a new cluster of rocks. Basically, here are the sequence of events I want to achieve:

- Player kills last asteroid,
- Message pops up announcing graduation to a new level of the game for about 5 seconds. In the meantime, the ship is still able to fly around in the background, but no asteroids appear.
- After the time of 5 seconds is up, the message disappears, and the field is repopulated with asteroids.
- The game continues.

I can use any of the pausing techniques discussed on the forums here, but simply pausing the operation of the program altogether obviously prevents the rendering of the ship to stop as well. I'd like the display cycle to continue.

I hope I'm clear with the description of my problem. Thanks for any help.

~arker

What, do you mean to pause the asteroids from coming at the end of the level? That's simple, just have a wave flag that flips on after 5 seconds of completion that basically tells your asteroid maker to do its thing, and after you created the last asteroid for your next level, flip it off.

edit: plz, don't flip your code off where the flag is, I used it in a different sense. :p

you could have a bool that you switch on when the player clears a level that prevents asteriods from being created. and then have a variable that holds the time that the level was completed. then, somewhere, check the time and whenever 5 seconds is up, switch the bool off to allow the new asteroids to be created.

that sounded a little scrambled. maybe it would make more sense in pseudocode

Code:

---


bool player_won = false;
int timer = 0;

main loop
{
  if ( player kills all asteroids && player_won == false )
  {
      player_won = true;
      timer = GetTickCount();
  }

  if ( all asteroids dead && player_won == false )
  {
      make new asteroids
  }
 
  if ( GetTickCount() - timer >= 5000 )
      player_won = false;
}

---

hope that made sense

[edit]

i used GetTickCount() which is a windows function. i dont know the equivalent *nix function, sorry :(

You could also create a thread for the dialog box and it would execute while the your main process was running.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by ...

Code:

---


bool player_won = false;
int timer = 0;

main loop
{
  if ( player kills all asteroids && player_won == false )
  {
      player_won = true;
      timer = GetTickCount();
  }

  if ( all asteroids dead && player_won == false )
  {
      make new asteroids
  }
 
  if ( GetTickCount() - timer >= 5000 )
      player_won = false;
}

---

---

Based on this, I chose something similar to the following:

Code:

---

#include <time.h>

void myDisplayFunction(void)
{
      if ( timer <= time(NULL) - 5 )
          rockDisplay();
      else
          printMessage("Starting next level");
}

---

Then, elsewhere in my code, once a level is cleared or any other pause is warranted,

Code:

---

timer = time(NULL);

---

Certainly nothing fancy, quite simple, and maybe a little more portable. Works quite well too.

Thanks all for the advice,
~arker