I’ve been beating my head off some basic Application code for a while now trying to implement a simple “Loading Screen” which just shows (in text) the progress of loading the game.
I’m not even sure of the easiest way to go about doing this.
I’ve tried simply putting the text into guiNode, but that does not seem to render until after the initialize() method is finished.
I’ve tried sticking the text into the rootNode, but that also seems to result in an empty black screen.
I’ve tried playing around with when the rendering happens, but I feel like this would be a bad way to do it even if it did work.
If someone could point me in the right direction, I would appreciate it 
Just use an AppState for this. Keep the SimpleApp.initialize() method lean so that you will set the engine up in a second and then attach your LoadScreenAppState, load your stuff in its initialize() or update() method and show a load screen with it, detach the LoadScreenAppState again afterwards and then attach the MainMenuAppState which takes over the game from there.