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();
Related
I want to put a delay between every if in this for
I've triend with Thread.sleep() but this freezes the gui and I don't know is it viable to use multiple swing timers in a loop.
Here I'm trying with a swing timer and keeps freezing the gui, what I'm doing wrong?.
int delay = 1000; //milliseconds
ActionListener taskPerformer = new ActionListener() {
int i=0;
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent evt) {
try
{
System.out.print(solucion.get(i)+" "+solucion.get(i+1)+" "+solucion.get(i+2)+" \n"+solucion.get(i+3)+" "+solucion.get(i+4)+" "+solucion.get(i+5)+" \n"+solucion.get(i+6)+" "+solucion.get(i+7)+" "+solucion.get(i+8));
System.out.println("\n");
Btn1.setText(solucion.get(i));
Btn2.setText(solucion.get(i+1));
Btn3.setText(solucion.get(i+2));
Btn4.setText(solucion.get(i+3));
Btn5.setText(solucion.get(i+4));
Btn6.setText(solucion.get(i+5));
Btn7.setText(solucion.get(i+6));
Btn8.setText(solucion.get(i+7));
Btn9.setText(solucion.get(i+8));
i++;
}
catch(IndexOutOfBoundsException e){((Timer)evt.getSource()).stop();} //if it gets a error we are at the end of the list and stop the timer
}
};
new Timer(delay, taskPerformer).start();
Use a Swing Timer. The Timer replaces the loop.
Every time the Timer fires you set the text and then increment the value of "i". When "i" reaches a specific value you stop the Timer.
See: Jlabel showing both old and new numbers for a simple example to get you started.
Read the section from the Swing tutorial on How to Use Swing Timers for more information.
If you want the guid not to freeze you need to execute it in a different thread. Running it in the main thread will aways cause the guid to freeze. You are using swing so the way to go would be:
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
public void run() {
// put your statements and delay here
}
});
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.
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
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.
I'm trying to implement a countdown timer into a pre-existing public class and I have a few questions.
An overview: I want to have a timer within a program that counts down from 60 (seconds) once the program is initialized.
If the timer reaches zero, the program quits.
If the user meets certain parameters within the 60 second time frame, the timer resets to 60, presents a new set of parameters, and begins the countdown again. It should be able to do this an infinite number of times, until the user fails to meet parameters within 60 seconds.
There will also be some sort of (TBD) GUI representation of the timer, most likely either numerical countdown or JProgressBar.
I'm semi-new (~3 months) to programming, self-taught, and still learning lots (so be gentle) :)
My questions are:
What is the best way to implement this?
I'm assuming this needs to run in a thread?
Will the timer be easily configurable? (not important, just interesting)
Thanks for your help. If you need to see code, I can find some.
EDIT: Just for some clarification/context:
This is for a timed racing video game I'm working on to develop my skills as a programmer. The idea is that a player has 60 seconds to complete a lap. If the player completes a successful lap, the timer resets to 60 seconds and the track changes to be slightly more difficult. The game runs until the player is unable to complete a lap in 60 seconds due to the difficulty. The game records the number of laps as a high score, and asks to player if they would like to try again.
If I were you, I'd use:
an AtomicInteger variable which would keep the current countdown value;
a timer thread that would wake up every 1s and decrementAndGet() the variable, comparing the result to zero and terminating the app if the result is zero;
(possibly) a thread that would also wake up every 1s to repaint the GUI -- the best approach here depends on your GUI framework.
Finally, whenever you need to reset the count back to 60s, you just call set(newValue) from any thread.
The timer thread's run() method could be as simple as:
for (;;) {
if (counter.decrementAndGet() <= 0) {
// TODO: exit the app
}
Thread.sleep(1000);
}
I think it's much easier to get this right than trying to manage multiple Timer objects.
The best way to impliment timer in your application is using some sheduler frameworks like Quartz
You could use java.util.Timer to schedule an execution of a method and then cancel it if the requirements is met.
Like this:
timer = new Timer();
timer.schedule(new Task(), 60 * 1000);
And then make a class like this to handle the timerschedule:
class Task extends TimerTask {
public void run() {
System.exit(0);
}
}
If the requirements is met, then do this to stop it from executing:
timer.cancel();
If you need to update your GUI better to use SwingWorker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SwingWorker
I would write something like this:
SwingWorker<String, Integer> timer = new SwingWorker<String, Integer>() {
Integer timer=60;
#Override
protected String doInBackground() throws Exception {
//update guiModel
//label.setText(timer.toString());
while(timer>0){
Thread.sleep(1000);
timer--;
}
return null;
}
#Override
public void done(){
System.exit(0);
}
};
JButton restart = new JButton(){
{
addActionListener(new ActionListener() {
#Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
timer.cancel(true);
timer.execute();
}
});
}
};