Develop Reference

Pause game and add flashing text 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

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.

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)

How do you repaint a container immediately as components are added in a separate thread in JAVA?

I am using java.
I have a click event that adds "squares" to a container, in a loop. I want each square to show up RIGHT when it is added. I tried running the 'adding of the squares' in a separate thread, but it is not working.
Here is some code I use for 'public class GuiController implements ActionListener, MouseListener':
#Override
public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e)
{
//createBoardPane();
new Thread
(
new Runnable()
{
public void run()
{
showAnimation();
}
}
).start();
}
public void showAnimation()
{
for(int i = 0; i < model.getAnimationList().size(); i++)
{
String coord = model.getAnimationList().get(i);
int x = Integer.parseInt(coord.substring(0, coord.indexOf(',')));
int y = Integer.parseInt(coord.substring(coord.indexOf(',') + 1, coord.length() - 2));
boolean shouldPlacePiece = (coord.charAt(coord.length() - 1) == 'p');
if(shouldPlacePiece)
{
model.getView().getBoardPane().getComponent(x + (y * model.getBoardSize())).setBackground(Color.BLACK);
}
else
{
model.getView().getBoardPane().getComponent(x + (y * model.getBoardSize())).setBackground(Color.WHITE);
}
model.getView().getBoardPane().repaint();
long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
while((System.currentTimeMillis() - time) < 250)
{
// wait loop
}
}
}
any help is appreciated!

Creating a separate Thread to run for this longish-running task was an excellent idea - unless you want to lock-up interactions with your GUI while doing your animation.
Now, Swing GUI objects are not Thread safe (with few exceptions), so you cannot work with them from a thread other than Swing's Event Dispatch Loop's thread. So take all the GUI update code in your for-loop, and wrap it with a new Runnable (yes, another one).
Then call SwingUtilities.invokeLater(Runnable doRun) with that Runnable on each iteration of the loop.
Your GUI update code will then be scheduled to run ASAP on the Event Dispatch Loop, which will occur while your worker thread goes to sleep (do you have anything against Thread.sleep?).
Alternative: Use SwingWorker instead of Thread
SwingWorker will create and manage a new the Thread for you, and publish data that it (SwingWorker) will cause to be run on the Event Dispatch Loop's thread. You'll override doInBackground with your code. Call publish with parameters to push across into the Event Dispatch Thread. Override process with code to process those parameters and update your GUI.
On gotcha with SwingWorker is that it accumulates published events over a period of about 33 milliseconds. If you're publishing more frequent than that you may get all your events bunched together every 33 milliseconds or so. In you case, 250 milliseconds between updates shouldn't be a problem.

Java2 ME: keyPressed() not working inside GameCanvas

I know J2ME is pretty outdated, but I have to do this for an assignment. Currently, I am using the GameCanvas class, and my game is a thread, so my code looks something like this..
class Game extends GameCanvas implements Runnable {
public GameCanvas() {
super(false);
}
public void run() {
while (true) {
draw();
flushGraphics();
}
}
protected void keyPressed(int keyCode) {
System.out.println("Hey, it actually worked.");
// other code to handle key press...
}
}
The sad thing is that the keyPressed method never gets called no matter how hard I spam hits on the emulator's numpad. I know of the getKeyStates() method that GameCanvas has, but I don't want to use it because I want to capture not just the game keys, but also the number keys 1~9.
Does anyone have any idea why my code doesn't go into my keyPressed() method, and what I can do about it? Many thanks.
Don't know where I went wrong... but after tweaking a little here and there, it started working perfectly fine. Thanks a lot guys! :)

You have a busy wait within Game#run method which most likely causes device ignore all your hits, making your UI loose responsiveness.
For simple test if above assumption is correct, just insert sleep within the loop, about like below:
while (true) {
draw();
flushGraphics();
try { Thread.sleep(100); } // sleep for 1/10 sec
catch (InterruptedException ie) { System.out.println(ie); }
}
If above helps to recover UI responsiveness, redesign your application to avoid busy waits - MIDP API provides a couple of ways to achieve that.

The MIDP documentation excerpt for GameCanvas(...)
If the developer only needs to query key status using the getKeyStates method, the regular key event mechanism can be suppressed for game keys while this GameCanvas is shown. If not needed by the application, the suppression of key events may improve performance by eliminating unnecessary system calls to keyPressed, keyRepeated and keyReleased methods.
Note that key events can be suppressed only for the defined game keys (UP, DOWN, FIRE, etc.); key events are always generated for all other keys.
So super(false) will suppress the Canvas key event listener methods in GameCanvas. In which case if you still want to register the key events use getKeyEvents(...) in your run(), the example is as under
// Get the Graphics object for the off-screen buffer
Graphics g = getGraphics();
while (true) {
// Check user input and update positions if necessary
int keyState = getKeyStates();
if ((keyState & LEFT_PRESSED) != 0) {
sprite.move(-1, 0);
}
else if ((keyState & RIGHT_PRESSED) != 0) {
sprite.move(1, 0);
}
// Clear the background to white
g.setColor(0xFFFFFF);
g.fillRect(0,0,getWidth(), getHeight());
// Draw the Sprite
sprite.paint(g);
// Flush the off-screen buffer
flushGraphics();
}