Develop Reference

Kotlin have two simultaneous activities

I am developing an Android Kotlin application which uses two different activities. In each one I have a button that allow me to move to the other one, to say, in Activity 1 I have a button that calls the follwing:
val intentActivity2 = Intent(this, Activity2::class.java)
startActivity(intentActivity2)
This launches correctly Activity2, which similarly inside it I have another button that calls the first activity to return to it:
val intentActivity1 = Intent(this, Activity1::class.java)
startActivity(intentActivity1)
The problem I have is that I want to have both activities running simultaneously (not needed to be shown at screen at the same time), and the issue right now is that every time I call the "startActivity(intent)" a new activity is created, loosing what I had in the previous one, so when I return to Activity1 everything is reset and the same when I go once again to Activity2. Both activities work fine and do their work, the problem is that I can't freely conmute between them.
Is there a way to have both activities at the same time or to not start a new activity everytime I want to change to the other one?
Thank you,

As someone just said you need ViewModel to retrieve your data after deleting/creating new activities. Maybe you can use fragments to do your things. Fragments are attached to activities and it is easier to use them instead of ViewModel.

Should I be closing my activities as I go through my app or will this cause Memory Leak? OutOfMemory Errors with drawables in layouts

I am currently developing a game with the android development enviornment. And for the past couple of months I've been dealing with a nasty OOM error. My first problem was that I was placing my drawables in the wrong folder (Drawable-xhdpi in drawable folder). But now, the OOM error eventually happens as you go through the game.
It is a rpg, basically compoed of menus in activity layouts with animations and things. and I've tried everything I could to fix it. I've tried the unbindDrawables method:
unbindDrawables(View view) {
if (view.getBackground() != null) {
view.getBackground().setCallback(null);
}
if (view instanceof ViewGroup) {
for (int i = 0; i < ((ViewGroup) view).getChildCount(); i++) {
unbindDrawables(((ViewGroup) view).getChildAt(i));
}
((ViewGroup) view).removeAllViews();
}
}
which does help a lot, but it does not fix the issue. And I cannot use any of the bitmap.factory options or anything, since I load my images through xml in my drawables folder. My images aren't that big by the way, as activities have a background of 720x1280, with some smaller images, and the most total images I'll have on screen at a time is around 8.
So this lead me to think that I may have a memory leak. I did ALOT of research, and I found out that use this(the activity context) will cause a leak, and I should use the application context. However, If I make the switch, there is almost no difference.
So I used MAT to figure out what was going on, and most of my memory is going to byte[], android.graphics.bitmap. And if I drill down to find the cause of this, it seems that java.ref.finalizer is causing all of the retained memory in the VM.
The only reason I could think this is happening, is because whenever I start a new activity I use,
Intent fight = new Intent(this, StartScreen.class);
//add this flag to remove all previous activities
fight.addFlags(Intent.FLAG_ACTIVITY_CLEAR_TOP);
startActivity(fight);
finish();
which opens a new activity, but closes the one we were just in. So, I'm guessing the bitmaps are not being recycled correctly whenever I finish an activity? or is closing and starting activities like this bad for memory?
I've been on Google all day trying to find the solution to this problem and I can't find it. Any soulutions are appreciated, thank you for reading this!
P.S if you would like to see any snippets of my logcat or code or anything, I am more than happy to post it.
P.S P.S My game has about 10-12 different activities I switch between. For example If I have activities A,B,C I open A, Open B close A, Open C close B, open B close C, open A close B.
EDIT: As request about my activities. Usually it is a menu, and when you press a button, that activity finishes, and then moves into another activity. Or buttons will do some math for things like selling, or doing damage to an enemy. One thing about my activity architecture, is that since I am closing every activity as I go to a new one, when I go back to the ones I closed, I am re-creating them. So I don't know if the old activities I finished still have memory in the VM that over time causes the Out Of Memory error, since it all builds up and keeps expanding. I explained My call for a new activity above. And the intent flag closes all past activities (if there are any) in the stack.
EDIT EDIT: As per request my oncreate and onDestroy:
OnCreate:
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.activity_start_screen);
//setting fonts
//a function that binds views by findview by Id and then sets their typeface
setFont();
//set up the music service
//connects the app to the background music service
playMusic();
//aquire wakelock
getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON);
}
OnDestroy:
#Override
public void onDestroy()
{
super.onDestroy();
//unbinds the service
unbindService(musicConnection);
//unbind drawables (function above)
unbindDrawables((LinearLayout) findViewById(R.id.container));
}

you should destroy the activities that you don't need anymore it takes place in the memory. or if you dont want your user/player to go back to the recent activity you should finish the activity. and if you will notice. if you dont finish the activity and press the back button several times it is layered.
second you mentioned that it is a game. in android programming you need to consider your bitmap resources so to avoid getting an OOM error in your game make use of sprite sheet it will save a lot of memory and usage of bitmaps in your application. i encountered those kind of situation and bitmaps mainly causes the OOM error.

I will say it depends. but with your problem your answer is right here
Quick quote from the site
Note: In most cases, you should not explicitly finish an activity using these methods.
As discussed in the following section about the activity lifecycle,the Android
system manages the life of an activity for you, so you do not need to finish your own
activities. Calling these methods could adversely affect the expected user experience
and should only be used when you absolutely do not want the user to return to this
instance of the activity.
Read for more info
well i get you lucidly now, but im thinking of what you are tryna do here, so y dont you use FragmentActivity for B and C.. So, Activity A opens B..B is opened as fragment but works like activity-(thats fragmentActivity), and opens C which is most likely a Fragment..which i think would be perfect for your situation..
for more info about FragmentActivity click Here
no more activities back and forth.. and its gonna work like an activity..

Launch the same activity for different buttons with different resource

I am new to android and was starting out by making a list of button.i want when each button click launch a same activity for them with diffrent resource such image and raw file

what is big deal here?
call same intent twice :)
refer how to start new activity here

You can the same activity/intent multiple times, just if you want the code in said activity to do something else you might want give it some extra information by using intent.putInt(<Key>, <Value>); and others

Preventing tilt from calling onCreate, and time measurement of an activity running.

Hi and thanks in advance for your time and attention.
I actually have 2 questions i'm not too sure about building an android app. Pretty basic stuff I believe:
1) My app is fully on Horizontal mode, like AngryBirds for example. When it starts the user figures out he should hold the phone like that, if he isn't already. And that is setup in the manifest for all the activities and works fine. but is there a way to prevent the physical device tilting to call onCreate again? can i override it's method or whatever? the reason i'm asking, is because i have a few ButtonViews that after you click on them, change their picture. i am using onRetainNonConfigurationInstance() to save the array of those ImageButtons, and i even mark the ones changed with the ImageButton setTag() and getTag() methods, so when onCreate is called because of the device tilt it gets the saved array from getLastNonConfigurationInstance() , but i've been trying to make it work for quite some time now and I just can't get it right. After the device tilt (I'm actually using the emulator so it's Ctrl+F11 but i believe it will happen with a device as well) all of the ImageButtons loose their pictures.. Long story short - are there better ways of doing this that you can recommend or is preventing the tilt from doing anything is possible or better?
2) What is the best way to know how many seconds the user has been on a screen? I tried to use two longs that i get via SystemClock.currentThreadTimeMillis() as follows: get the starting time onCreate, and the ending time on the method i call to move to the second intent just before i startActivity. but I think because they are called from different threads, the endingpoint - startingpoint is not correct. What is the way to insure both of the methods of SystemClock.currentThreadTimeMillis() are called from the same thread, the main thread of the activity that i'm stopwatching? Is there a better way to go around this?
Thanks again.

You are doing the right to handle orientation change. Please refer to this link http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/resources/runtime-changes.html . This will help you to get it working.
Good way would be to count the time between onResume and onPause. OnCreate is not called all the time if you are resuming activity.

1) You can try adding the property android:configChanges="orientation" to your activity in the manifest file. It worked for me when my dynamic Action Bar tabs got messed up upon rotation of the screen.

You need specify orientation in android manifest for each of your activities, it will not call onCreate then. android:screenOrientation look at http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/manifest/activity-element.html
User see and interact with your activity starting since onResume and ends on onPause. Other time it does not guarantee that user actually see and can click on something in the activity. System.getCurrentMillis() is good enough.

Changing views/activity in Android

I am a newbie in Android and currently I am designing an application where I have faced a big problem with changing views. I have 3 classes, each one for a different screen. I use a button to change pages but it does not seem to work. Every time I move to the next screen, the variables methods etc of the 2nd screen are located in a different class. Can you please show me the simplest way to do this? Thank you.

Place each screen in different Activity. Start respective activities according to button presses. To pass data between activities use Intent.
Activity Reference
Intent Reference
Simple Example for Activities and Intents