Re: Too busy message loop?

What you are doing there is a typical message loop for a computer game.
The reason, why it is so busy is because you do not use GetMessage() in a
loop. If there's no message in the application's message queue, then
GetMessage() puts the thread to sleep till a message arrives (probably by
calling WaitMessage()). Since you don't call GetMessage(), the thread is
never put to sleep, and thus the loop executed all the time.

If this is for a game, then you're on the right path. You can, however,
enhance this, by having a flag that tells the message loop, if the
application is active. If it is not, then you can call WaitMessage(). This
way other Windows application will have a chance to run smoothly. (see
WM_ACTIVATE and WM_ACTIVATEAPP for finding out if you application is
active).

So a slighty enhanced version (for a game that doesn't need to continue
executing while it's not active - i.e., not an online game) would look
like this:

while (true)
{
   if (!::PeekMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0, PM_NOREMOVE))
   {
       if (!::GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0)) break;
       ::TranslateMessage(&msg);
       ::DispatchMessage(&msg);
   }
   else if (IsAppActive())
   {
       // Run your game logic here...
   }
   else
   {
       ::WaitMessage();
   }
}

Note, that the above will still be very busy, when the application is very
busy. If your message loop is for a normal application (i.e, not a game),
then do:

while (::GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0))
{
   ::TranslateMessage(&msg);
   ::DispatchMessage(&msg);
}

"Boki" <bokiteam@ms21.hinet.net> wrote in message
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