I need a Java timer - java

i need a timer for my game...
i searched a lot but without luck.
please help.
this is my mouse event:
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
mouseX = e.getX();
mouseY = e.getY();
if(shot == false){
Ink = 0;
}
if(ready == true){
shot = true;
// I need a timer here to wait a second and then stop shooting.
}
}

Again, use a Swing Timer:
// code not compiled nor tested. It was typed free-hand.
// so it was not meant to be copy, pasted and used, but rather to show you
// the idea.
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
mouseX = e.getX();
mouseY = e.getY();
// don't use if (shot == false). Instead do:
if (!shot) {
Ink = 0;
}
// likewise, no need to use if (ready == true). Instead do:
if (ready) {
shot = true;
// turn off your ability to shoot here by setting a boolean.
ableToShoot = false;
// start a Swing Timer that does not repeat
// in the Timer turn back on the ability to shoot by setting a boolean
Timer swingTimer = new Timer(TIMER_DELAY_TIME, new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
// allow shots here
ableToShoot = true;
}
});
swingTimer.setRepeats(false);
swingTimer.start();
}
}
Notes:
Don't use Thread.sleep(...) unless you want to put your entire GUI to sleep as this will sleep the Swing event thread.
Don't use a java.util.Timer. Swing's threading model dictates that almost all swing calls be made on the Swing event thread. A Swing Timer is built to do just this, to be sure that all calls in the timer are called on the EDT, the Swing event thread. A java.util.Timer does not do this, and this will lead to occasional very difficult to debug threading bugs, the worst kind of bugs.
The Swing Timer Tutorial link.
The Swing event threading model tutorial link

Related

Swing Timer Not Working (Java)

For some reason even though I am using the exact code example from oracle's website for the Swing Timer it is not waiting for 1 second. It just skips to the JOptionPane that says "Your score was etc etc".
Here is my source code for a school project. Why is this not working and not waiting for 1 second before running the rest of the code?
//Check to see if user has enetered anything
if(!answered)
{
int delay = 1000; //milliseconds
ActionListener taskPerformer = new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
//...Perform a task...
}
};
new Timer(delay, taskPerformer).start();
afk = true;
incorrect += 1;
answered = true; //This breakes it out of the loop
}
A timer is used to run a callback after a specific amount of time. If you simply want to delay, you can either move the code to be run after the delay into the taskPerformer action listener.
Thread.sleep(1000) is not ideal here, because it will cause the UI to completely freeze as you will make the UI thread sleep.

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.

Displaying graphics as they paint in swing

I created a maze generator in swing for a class, and it works great. The only thing is, I want to show the maze being created in realtime, but the way I have everything set, it only updates after all the calculations have completed. I am using paintComponent and repaint in my code. How do I have it show the JFrame and draw lines immediately, rather than doing the algorithm and showing them all at the end?
Here is the relevant code:
public void generateMaze() {
Stack<Box> stack = new Stack<>();
int totalCells = Finals.numCol * Finals.numRow, visitedCells = 1;
Box currentCell = boxes[0][0];
Box nextCell;
stack.add(currentCell);
while (visitedCells < totalCells) {
nextCell = checkNeighbors(currentCell.xCoord, currentCell.yCoord);
if (nextCell != null) {
knockWalls(currentCell, nextCell);
stack.add(currentCell);
currentCell = nextCell;
visitedCells++;
} else {
currentCell = stack.pop();
}
}
repaint();
}
Here is my paintComponent method override
public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
for(int x = 0; x < Finals.numRow; x++) {
for(int y = 0; y < Finals.numCol; y++) {
if(boxes[y][x].top != null)
boxes[y][x].top.paint(g);
if(boxes[y][x].bottom != null)
boxes[y][x].bottom.paint(g);
if(boxes[y][x].left != null)
boxes[y][x].left.paint(g);
if(boxes[y][x].right != null)
boxes[y][x].right.paint(g);
}
}
}
The knockWalls method sets certain walls equal to null, which causes them to not be drawn in the paintComponent method. I'm still fairly new at a lot of this, so I apologize if some of the code isn't super high quality!
Thanks everyone.
As MadProgrammer already pointed out in the comments, you are almost certainly blocking the Event Dispatch Thread. This is the thread that is responsible for repainting the GUI, and for handling the interaction events (like mouse clicks and button presses).
So presumably, you start the computation via a button click, roughly like this:
// The actionPerformed method of the button that
// starts the maze solving computation
#Override
void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
generateMaze();
}
That means that the event dispatch thread will be busy with executing generateMaze(), and not be able to perform the repainting.
The simplest solution would be to change this to something like
// The actionPerformed method of the button that
// starts the maze solving computation
#Override
void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e)
{
Thread thread = new Thread(new Runnable()
{
#Override
public void run()
{
generateMaze();
}
});
thread.start();
}
However, some care has to be taken: You may not modify Swing components from this newly created thread. If you have to modify Swing components, you have to put the task that performs the actual modification of the Swing component back on the EDT, using SwingUtilities.invokeLater(task). Additionally, you have to make sure that there are no other synchronization issues. For example, the lines
if(boxes[y][x].top != null)
boxes[y][x].top.paint(g);
are still (and have to be!) executed by the event dispatch thread. In this case, you have to make sure that no other thread can set the boxes[y][x].top to null after the EDT has executed the first line and before it executes the second line. If this may be an issue in your case, you might have to provide a bit more code, e.g. the code that is showing where and how the boxes[y][x] are modified.

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.

Java strange graphics blinking in while lock.await()

i have here a strange behaviour of my graphical user interface.
At first here a piece of code:
/**
*
*/
#Override
protected Void doInBackground() throws Exception {
final ModelGameState actualGameState = controller.getActualGameState();
final ModelCoinState actualCoinState = (actualGameState.getPlayersTurn() == ModelConstants.PLAYER_ONE_ID? actualGameState.getCoinsPlayerOne() : actualGameState.getCoinsPlayerTwo());
final List<ModelCoinState> temp = MoveCalculator.getMoves(actualCoinState, this.cellID);
final CountDownLatch lock = new CountDownLatch(temp.size());
int time = 500;
for(int i = 0; i < temp.size(); i++) {
final int index = i;
Timer timer = new Timer(time, new ActionListener() {
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
if(actualGameState.getPlayersTurn() == ModelConstants.PLAYER_ONE_ID) {
actualGameState.setCoinsPlayerOne(temp.get(index));
} else {
actualGameState.setCoinsPlayerTwo(temp.get(index));
}
controller.setActualGameState(new ModelGameState(actualGameState));
lock.countDown();
}
});
timer.setRepeats(false);
timer.start();
time += 500;
}
lock.await();
return null;
}
at second here my gui:
and here my problem: everytime lock.await is called my screen
looks like that:
As you can see, behind each of my circles the top left corner
of my gui is shown everytime lock.await() is called (At least i
think it is when lock.await()is called because when i delete lock.await()
i cant see the whole animation of my gui but i also cant
see this strange behaviour and that behaviour appears always
when the program is through all code of doInBackground().
What causes this strange behaviour?
not an answer only disagree with, my comments against, no reviews, not tried your code, apologize me that there are any reason, maybe my bad
doInBackground() is bridge between AWT/Swing EDT and Workers Thread(s), by default never notified EDT
process, publish, setProgress and done() notify EDT
then Swing Timer inside doInBackground() is against all intentions, why was SwingWorker implemented in official APIs, there is place to execute long running, hard or non_safe code
again SwingWorker is designated as bridge between AWT/Swing and Workers Thread(s)
_____________________________
there are two ways
use CountDownLatch with invokeLater() or Swing Timer. don't mix that together nor from SwingWorker
use CountDownLatch, util.Timer, SheduledExecutor with notify EDT by wrap (only relevant, only output, methods will be repainted on the screen) Swing methods to the invokeLater()
use only Swing Timer (non_accurate on hour period)

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