dibblethewrecker wrote:i understand that you may not want to help but totally blanking me seems a bit harsh!
i dont think that everybody here intentional ignored you

as i dont have the time right now to look into your work now, nor do i know anything about arch linux 'runscript-managemant, i will only try to sum up how it works unter gentoo(as far as i understand it

)
first when the kernel is booted and fbcon is initialized, fbsplash sets up the console background and (if in silent mode) starts splash_helper which resides in your initramfs. This switches to tty8 and displays the silent splash screen with the "initializing kernel message". There is no progress bar update during this time.
when kernel is ready and init takes over, the real fun starts
the main function is the splash() function in /sbin/splash-function. this is called by the main rc script always when a) a new runlevel is entered b) a service is attempted to start c) service is started d)same for stopping service and e) when all is done for the runlevel change.
if a runlevel is startet, /sbin/splash_util is started as a daemon for the whole runlevel init phase.
Every communication to this daemon goes over a fifo. Then a list of all services in the runlevel is generated to track progress of the init phase and update the progressbar accordingly.
So whenever a service is started, the script calculates the current progress and then sends a update command over the fifo to the daemon which updates the screen.
if runlevel init is complete, daemon is killed, and script will switch back to tty1.
Thats the big picture in general i think
if you didnt get the progress bar this indicates that a) the scripts arent able to communicate with the daemon or they fail to calculate the progress status. As Arch linux has another rc-script system i think you have to rewrite the part that generates the servicelist and calculates the status.
For more infos you may read /sbin/splash and /sbin/splash-functions.sh.
CU
Imago