Pause game and add flashing text Java - java

I have this loop
while (true) {
game.update();
view.repaint();
Thread.sleep(DELAY);
}
In the game.update various components of the game have their position changed and those updates are reflected when the repaint() method is called on the view. The view extends JComponent and loops through the game objects and calls their print methods.
What I want to do is have a boolean called nextLevel in the game and if it's true Flash text on the screen for the player to notify them that they're going onto the next level. Maybe flash 4-5 times. Then continue the game.
Is this possible? I have been playing around with Thead.Sleep() but this only seems to pause the displaying and in the background the game is still going on.
Any ideas on how to do this?

Maybe you want to avoid threading by using a Timer object.
an example like that could be
int flashTimer = 0;
if(nextLevel) {
Timer timer = new Timer(1000, new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
//flash something method here
flashTimer++;
}
});
timer.start();
}
and then check your flashTimer if it reaches the number you want then just stop the timer by timer.stop();
Just an idea which seems to me a bit simpler. the 1000 value is milliseconds which is passed and executes the code inside the actionPerformed method every 1 sec.
Hope it helped

Related

JProgressBar moves instantly and not gradually (java)

I want to make a ProgressBar move gradually using a Jbutton. To achieve this I am using a for loop and the method Thread.sleep. The problem is that insted of moving a tiny bit every second (the progress bar) after pressing the button, the program waits until the loop finishes and then does instantly move the progress up. When I take the loop outside of the button listener it works as I want but I really need it to work when pressing the button. Here is the code:
progressBar.setOrientation(SwingConstants.VERTICAL);
progressBar.setMinimum(0);
progressBar.setMaximum(100);
progressBar.setValue(50);
panel1.setLayout(null);
panel1.add(progressBar);
progressBar.setBounds(40,6,100,100);
button1.addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
int counter = 5;
for (int i = 0; i < 5; i++) {
progressBar.setValue(progressBar.getValue() + counter);
try {
Thread.sleep(1000);
} catch (InterruptedException ex) {
throw new RuntimeException(ex);
}
}
}
});
If anyone can help me I will be very grateful!
Your code runs on the Event Dispatcher Thread (EDT). That thread is responsible for handling events, but also for repainting. Because it's just one thread, the repainting only occurs after your method ends.
There are some ways to solve this. In your case, a javax.swing.Timer would probably be easiest. Instead of running the loop in a single method, the button click starts a timer that runs every second. When it's done the timer can cancel itself. A slightly more difficult alternative is to use a SwingWorker. You could publish data in the doInBackGround method, and override process to perform the updates to the progress bar.
For more information, please read Concurrency in Swing.

Keeping timer events equally spaced

I'm attempting to get an animation working in a game I'm developing. The animation works by setting a button size to very small, then gradually growing it to its normal size again. I have it working, except I'm having timing issues.
Sometimes the button will grow almost instantly, sometimes it goes VERY slow. I'm looking for something inbetween, and I need it to ALWAYS grow at that size, not some times fast sometimes slow.
I've looked into it and I found this pseudocode:
distance_for_dt = speed * delta_time
new_position = old_position + distance_for_dt
Unfortunately I don't understand what's being said, and I don't know how to apply this to my code. Can anyone help with that or explain what's being said in the above pseudocode?
Here's my timer code, timer is already defined above as a Timer, and z[] is just a pair of coordinates:
timer = new Timer(18, new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
Dimension dim = button[z[0]][z[1]].getSize();
if (dim.getHeight() < 79.9) {
button[z[0]][z[1]].setSize((int) (dim.getWidth() + 6), (int) (dim.getHeight() + 6));
} else {
button[z[0]][z[1]].setSize(80, 80);
timer.stop();
}
}
});
timer.start();
Depending on how many updates you're calling on your Swing application, it may be getting "backed up" and slowing down. For instance, if you wanted to accomplish the animation without a Timer, you could just do something like this:
// example method to do animation
public void animateButton(final int wait){
Thread thread = new Thread(){
public void run(){
// some loop structure to define how long to run animation
Dimension dim = button[z[0]][z[1]].getSize();
while (dim.getHeight() < 79.9){
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable(){
//update Swing components here
});
try{ Thread.Sleep(wait); }
catch(Exception e){}
}
}
}
}
thread.start();
}
I think this may be similar to how a Timer updates the GUI, as Timers run on a separate thread. I would look into whether or not you need to use invokeLater(new Runnable) inside a timer to properly schedule the task. I had to do this to allow a project I was working on to keep responsive during long tasks. If you really needed to ensure the speed and maybe DROP updates to adjust for system lag, then you'll need to be calculating how complete the animation is vs how much time has passed, using a method call such as System.currentTimeMillis() or System.nanoTime(). Then, adjust accordingly for each step of the animation.

Can't play gif when using freeTTS Voices - Java

I am using freeTTS to speak out some text, in the background i want a animated gif to keep playing
When i try this: as soon as the voice starts speaking, the image in background gets hanged even if i keep it in some other JFrame... and after the speech is completed it starts moving. I want it to run properly without pauses.
I am placing a animated gif in a label by importing it to my application and changing the icon to that image in label' properties.
Edit
Here is my code:
private void RandomjBActionPerformed(java.awt.event.ActionEvent evt) {
Voice voice;
voice = voiceManager.getVoice(VOICENAME);
voice.allocate();
voice.speak("Daksh");
}
I am actually using a lot of setVisible, setText, declaration of integers, calculating on them but i have removed them to simplify the code for you to understand. Still it gives the same problem if executed.
The button 'RandomjB' is clicked from another button by the following code:
final Timer timer = new Timer(zad, new ActionListener() {
int tick = 0;
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
System.out.println("Success" + ++tick);
RandomjB.doClick();
final int col = Integer.parseInt(t3.getText());;
if (tick >= col) {
((Timer) e.getSource()).stop();
for(int g=0; g<col; g++){
jButton2.setVisible(true); // Check Button -> Visible
}
}
}
});
timer.setInitialDelay(0);
System.out.format("About to schedule task.%n");
timer.start();
System.out.format("Task scheduled.%n");
It is hard to tell without the code, I however assume that you loop the speech synthesis within the one and only Swing-Thread and therefore block all kind of window updates as long as the speech loop is in progress.
As stated by Shaun Wild: you need to use a second Thread for the speech loop.
You may want to do some research on Threads and Concurrency
These allow two things to operate simultaneously, this is just my assumption.
Assuming that you instantiate some kind of class for the FreeTTS you may want to do something like this
FreeTTSClass tts;
new Thread(new Runnable(){
public void run(){
tts = new FreeTTSClass();
}
}).start();

Displaying JLabel movement

I am attempting to create a simple animation in which a series of bubble rotate around a centre point. I have one version of animation where the bubbles spread from the centrepoint before they begin to rotate, which works fine, but as soon as I click one of the images (which sparks the animation) the screen freezes for a moment and then the bubbles appear in their end position, rather than showing each step they made.
What I have so far is:
while(bubble[1].getDegree() != 270)
{
long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
//the below if statement contains the function calls for
//the rotating bubble animations.
next();
draw();
// delay for each frame - time it took for one frame
time = (1000 / fps) - (System.currentTimeMillis() - time);
if (time > 0)
{
try
{
Thread.sleep(time);
}
catch(Exception e){}
}
}
public void draw()
{
for(int i = 1; i < bubble.length; i++)
{
iconLabel[i].setLocation(bubble[i].getX(), bubble[i].getY());
textLabel[i].setLocation((bubble[i].getX()+10),(bubble[i].getY()+10));
}
}
For clarity, the method "next()" merely changes the position of the bubble to the appropriate place, I know this to be functioning as I have had the animation work before but once I implemented the animation to JLabels it stopped working.
Any help would be appreciated.
The drawing is frozen because you block the event dispatch thread. Drawing is done in the same thread as the while loop, and since the loop prevents anything else happening while it's running, swing can get to drawing only after the loop is finished, so only the last position is drawn.
Use a swing Timer instead:
timer = new Timer(delay, new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
// whatever you need for the animation
updatePositions();
repaint();
}
});
timer.start();
And then call timer.stop() when all the frames you need have been processed.

How to implement a count down timer in swing

I would like to know how should I implement a count down timer in swing.
I'm currently developing a net game with count down timer, and I need the Timer to be shown all the time in the corner.
The problem is I don't know how to implement it in away that the game screen will be responsive all the time for the user in the same time the timer is on..
1.I'm asking it because I know every update to the view is being held through the event dispatch thread but it can also freeze my game if there is something which run there consistently (like timer).
2.Design aspect :Do you know some nice ways of how to show the timer in an attractive and maybe animated way?
Thank you very much in advance
Use the javax.swing.Timer class. This will fire action events at fixed intervals, which will prevent the GUI from becoming unresponsive.
As for animation, see the 2D Graphics tutorial.
int j=10;
final Timer t = new Timer(1000, new ActionListener() {
private long time = 10 * 1000; //10 seconds, for example
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if (time > 0) {
time -= 1000;
j--;
jLabel1.setText(Long.toString(j));
}
}
});
t.start();

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