I am quite new to Android and want to create a simple game.
Therefor i need a thread which is drawing a transparent Rectangle on different positions every 4 seconds with a 2 second break (without drawing).
I got it working with a "recursive" thread calling a new instance of itself with handler.postdelayed.
My feeling about threads tells me, that this isn't a very nice way...
While searching here for similar topics, i found out about the Timer construct. Can i use this for my problem?
Is there a better way to do this?
(edit) The thread is meant for highlighting part of the gameboard, but only for 4 seconds. After that there should be 2 seconds without highlighting. Then 4 seconds highlighting the next part of the board etc.
(edit2) I couldn't use sleep, because it froze my UI. If anyone has a similar situation, here is how i solved it:
public class myRunnable implements Runnable {
private int duration;
private int counter;
private boolean highlight;
public myRunnable(int duration, boolean highlight) {
this.duration = duration;
this.highlight = !highlight;
}
#Override
public void run() {
if (highlight) {
// highlight 4s long
highlight();
invalidate();
myThread = new myRunnable(duration, highlight);
postDelayed(myThread, duration);
} else {
// pause (2s)
resetHighlight();
invalidate();
myThread = new myRunnable(duration, highlight);
postDelayed(myThread, noHighlightDuration);
}
}
}
The Best way to do this is use to use invalidate() to call the onDraw() function and a method to update the position. Something like this-
int x,y;
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
x=10;
y=10;
canvas.drawRect(___);
update();
invalidate();
}
private void update()
{/*Change the x and y/*}
Here everytime inavlidate() is called from anywhere the onDraw() is called again with the new x and y.
Related
I've been building a game for some time, and just realized I did something very wrong the whole time, and still don't really know better.
I have a control class, my MainActivity, which pretty much only does the following:
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
operator=new Operator(getBaseContext());
setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); //<- framelayout with the view and two buttons on top
}
//Buttons:
public void shoot(View view) {
operator.shoot(view.getId());
}
public void pause(View view) {
AndronXView.running=!AndronXView.running;
}
Then there is my View, which draws Actors and makes my workerthread compute everything:
public MyView(Context context, AttributeSet attrs) {
super(context, attrs);
animHandler = new Handler();
animHandler.postDelayed(loadLvl1, 5000);
arrayOfActors = operator.getActors(); //simplyfied to one array
if(arrayOfActors==null)
arrayOfActors=new Actor[0]; //if op hasn't loaded yet, prevent NPE in onDraw
//stripped of unimportant color and size computing stuff
}
protected void onDraw(final Canvas canvas){
//Should I copy player before doing this? Never got problems here so far.
canvas.drawBitmap(operator.player.getCurrentGraphic(), operator.player.getX(), operator.player.getY(), null);
for(Actor actor:arrayOfActors) {
canvas.drawBitmap(actor.getCurrentGraphic(), actor.getX(), actor.getY(), null);
}
if (running) {
operator.run(); //Compute. Realized my mistake here and changed the inside, wait for it.
animHandler.postDelayed(r, Operator.FRAME_RATE); //r=invalidate();
animHandler.post(loadActors); //get Arrays from op
}else animHandler.post(wait);
}
Runnable wait = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
if (running)
animHandler.post(r);
else animHandler.postDelayed(this, Operator.FRAME_RATE);
}
};
#Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(#NonNull MotionEvent event){
int action = event.getAction();
if(action==MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN || action==MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE){
operator.player.setSpeed((event.getX()-operator.player.getHorizontalMid())
/AndronX.PLAYER_MOVE_LAG,
(event.getY()-operator.player.getVerticalMid())/AndronX.PLAYER_MOVE_LAG);
}
return true;
}
And then there is my Operator, extending Thread, which computes movement and interactions of the actors in the background:
public Operator(Context baseContext) {
this.player = new Player(baseContext); //context to load drawable from ressource
arrayListOfActors=new ArrayList<>();
//Looper.prepare(); //it crashed and said only one Looper/Thread
//Looper.loop(); //so I removed it
opHandler = new Handler();
}
#Override
public void run() {
opHandler.post(gameStep); //before, I had the whole processing inside this run().
}
private Runnable gameStep = new Runnable(){
player.move();
computeEveryMemberOf(arrayListOfActors); //much computing happens here, usually
//contains 1-30 Actors that get cross-referenced
arrayOfActors = arrayListOfActors.toArray(new Actor[arrayListOfActors.size()]);
}
public Actor[] getActors(){
return arrayOfActors;
}
Before, I had the computign directly in my operators run() method, which I realized made the background thread useless. I#m not sure though if this is the right way, should I let the operator loop itself, would the two threads kinda stay in sync? Does it even matter?
Or should I go run(){ sleep(FRAME_RATE); compute();}?
Edit: A big problem arose, and I'm not sure if it's because of this, so I really need an answer here how to do this the right way.
With every step, I move some actors a little bit up or down, in a cosinus wave like speed (like it's projection to an axis), and currently, the actual movement doesn't get through to the view, they just jump from max to min and back, although they do it in the desired speed(looks like extreme lag).
Actually you can see for yourself what this problem is: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/28278772/AndronX.apk
I'm writing a simple Whack a Mole clone, and I've got my UI elements declared in a GridLayout in a layout.xml, then assigned to ImageView variables in an array programmatically. I've got a startGame() method that simply takes a random int, pulls it from the array and causes it to go visible for a second, then repeats. For some reason, when I put this code in a while() loop, it causes my UI to go blank as soon as it's launched.
I know it's the while() loop because I tried taking the code out of the while() loop, and it ran correctly (once), but turns everything white when placed in a while loop.
Here's the method causing the problem:
public void startGame() {
gameStarted = true;
while(gameStarted) {
randomInt = rand.nextInt(11);
mole[randomInt].setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
handler.postDelayed(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
mole[randomInt].setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
}
}, 5000);
}
}
All the other relevant code is in onCreate, it's otherwise just a skeleton Activity subclass.
public class WAM_Activity extends Activity {
private ImageView[] mole = new ImageView[11];
private int[] moleId = {R.id.mole1, R.id.mole3, R.id.mole4, R.id.mole5, R.id.mole6, R.id.mole7, R.id.mole8, R.id.mole9, R.id.mole10, R.id.mole11, R.id.mole12};
private boolean gameStarted;
private int randomInt = 0;
private Random rand = new Random();
Handler handler = new Handler();
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
setContentView(R.layout.wam_view_layout);
for (int i = 0; i < 11; i++) {
mole[i] = (ImageView) findViewById(moleId[i]);
mole[i].setOnClickListener(new View.OnClickListener() {
#Override
public void onClick(View view) {
//do stuff eventually
}
});
}
gameStarted = true;
startGame();
}
Any idea why this isn't working? I've been staring at it for hours and I'm quite stumped.
Android doesn't work that way, when onCreate is called, it need to be finished in order for the app to keep responding, I'm surprised you are not getting any "App not respopnding" error.
If you want to create a "game loop" you can simply by creating a new Thread and putting the while in there.
Activity's lifecycle must be executed without blocking them for the app to operate correctly, for more info check here.
Do you know about threads? if you want i can post an example of how to do that with threads but it might be long and if you don't know what a Thread is it will be too confusing for you.
Edit: Ok I'll make an example of a Thread
When I create my games I usually have only one Activity that the only thing it does is creating a custom SurfaceView and nothing else.
public class GameActivity extends Activity
{
//This is a custom class that extends SurfaceView - I will write it below
private GameSurface game;
#Override
protected void onCreate(Bundle bundle)
{
super.onCreate(bundle);
//Create a new instance of the game
game = new GameSurface(this);
//Set the View of the game to the activity
setContentView(game);
}
}
You can also add extra stuff like onSaveInstanceState to save game data and restore them later but I don't want to add them now so the code looks simple.
This class was very simple, let's move on to our SurfaceView. The reason I picked a SurfaceView to do that it's because it is made to allow custom graphics to be drawn on it - exactly what we want on a video game. I will try to make the class as simple as possible:
/*SurfaceHolder.Callback will run some functions in our class when
our surface is completed - at that point we can initialize data
that have to do with the View's width/height.
I don't know if you've noticed that on a View's onCreate()
when you call getWidth() or getHeight() you get 0, that's because
the surface is not initialized yet, this is a way to fix that.
Also we need a Runnable to run the Thread inside this class,
no need to make more classes and make it more complicated*/
public class GameSurface extends SurfaceView
implements SurfaceHolder.Callback, Runnable
{
//This is our thread - we need the "running" variable to be
//able to stop the Thread manually, this will go inside our "while" loop
private Thread thread;
private boolean running;
//Right here you can add more variables that draw graphics
//For example you can create a new class that has a function that
//takes Canvas as a parameter and draws stuff into it, I will add
//a Rect in this case which is a class already made by android
//but you can create your own class that draws images or more
//complicated stuff
private Rect myRect;
//Rect needs a paint to give it color
private Paint myPaint;
//Constructor
public GameSurface(Context context)
{
super(context);
//This is the callback to let us know when surface is completed
getHolder().addCallback(this);
}
//When a class implements SurfaceHolder.Callback you are forced to
//create three functions "surfaceCreated", "surfaceChanged" and
//"surfaceDestroyed" these are called when the surface is created,
//when some settings are changed (like the orientation) and when
//it is about to be destroyed
#Override
public void surfaceCreated(Surface holder)
{
//Let's initialize our Rect, lets assume we want it to have 40
//pixels height and fill the screen's width
myRect = new Rect(0, 0, getWidth(), 40);
//Give color to the rect
myPaint = new Paint();
myPaint.setARGB(0, 255, 0, 0);
//In case you are not familiar with the Rect class, as
//parameters it gets Rect(left, top, right, bottom)
//Time to start our Thread - nothing much to explain here if
//you know how threads work, remember this class implements
//Runnable so the Thread's constructor gets "this" as parameter
running = true;
thread = new Thread(this);
thread.start();
}
//We won't use this one for now, but we are forced to type it
//Even if we leave it empty
#Override
public void surfaceChanged(SurfaceHolder holder, int format, int width, int height) {}
//When the surface is destroyed we just want the Thread to
//terminate - we don't want threads running when our app is not visible!
#Override
public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder)
//We will type this function later
{destroyThread();}
//Time for the interesting stuff! let's start with input
#Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event)
{
//The logic is as follows: when our Rect is touched, we want
//it to become smaller
if (event.getAction() == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN)
{
if (myRect.contains((int) event.getX(), (int) event.getY())
{
myRect.right -= 5;
//Return true - we did something with the input
return true;
}
}
return super.onTouchEvent(event);
}
//This is our update, it will run once per frame
private void update()
{
//Let's assume we want our rect to move 1 pixel downwards
//on every frame
myRect.offset(0, 1);
}
//Now for our draw function
public void draw(Canvas canvas)
{
//Here we want to draw a background and our rect
canvas.drawARGB(0, 0, 0, 255);
canvas.drawRect(myRect, myPaint);
}
//The only thing left is our run() function for the Thread
#Override
public void run()
{
//Screen
Canvas canvas;
//Our game cycle (the famous while)
while(running)
{
//Count start time so we can calculate frames
int startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
//Update our game
update();
//Empty screen so it can obtain new instance
canvas = null;
//Try locking the canvas for pixel editing on surface
try
{
//Try getting screen
canvas = getHolder().lockCanvas();
//Succeeded
if (canvas != null) synchronized (getHolder())
{
//Actual drawing - our draw function
draw(canvas);
}
} finally
{
//Draw changes
if (canvas != null) getHolder().unlockCanvasAndPost(canvas);
}
//End Frame - 1000/30 means 30 frames per second
int frameTime = System.currentTimeMillis() -startTime;
if (frameTime < 1000/30)
try { Thread.sleep(1000/30 -frameTime); } catch (InterruptedException e){}
}
}
//Last but not least, our function for closing the thread
private void destroyThread()
{
//Stop thread's loop
running = false;
//Try to join thread with UI thread
boolean retry = true;
while (retry)
{
try {thread.join(); retry = false;}
catch (InterruptedException e) {}
}
}
}
I may have made some minor mistakes (probably with case sensitive letters) so feel free to correct these, I wrote the code at once so I didn't have time to test it, it should work flawlessly though.
If you have any more questions, need more explanation or something is not working right let me know!
I'm trying to update the canvas every 100ms using postDelayed() and then invalidate() (which calls onDraw again), but for some reason it will update by 30-50ms. I have debug messages printing out every time the onUpdate() function is called and the timestamps are spaced apart by 30-50ms. Why is it going so much faster than I want it to go? Usually, you'd expect functions run using a delay to be slower than what you specified.
private int FRAME_RATE = 100;
protected void onDraw(Canvas c) {
onDrawAnimation(c);
// Delay the next update by FRAME_RATE milliseconds
_h.postDelayed(_game_loop, FRAME_RATE);
}
private Runnable _game_loop = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
if (!_paused) {
onUpdate(); // Update locations/speed
invalidate(); // Update visuals (ends up calling onDraw)
}
}
};
Do it like this.
private Runnable _game_loop = new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
_h.postDelayed(_game_loop, FRAME_RATE);
if (!_paused) {
onUpdate(); // Update locations/speed
invalidate(); // Update visuals (ends up calling onDraw)
}
}
};
Also, don't forget to remove all delayed callbacks:
public void onPause(){
_h.removeCallbacks(_game_loop);
// or _h.removeCallbacksAndMessages(null);
// to remove everything
}
You will probably want to separate onUpdate() and invalidate() in different methods and call them at different intervals.
Usually, you need to update the visuals much more often than the game logic, and you want to keep the visual refresh as lightweight as possible. In you code, if you are doing something that takes longer than 100 milliseconds, you will get visible stuttering.
I use functions for canvas like drawCircle and drawPoint in android.
This works fine.
But the problem now is to draw these different items with a delay, so it looks like an animation.
What kind of mechanism should I use? Have tried with async but I dont like that way of doing it.
Should I use some kind of timer that just draw with an interval or is there other clever ways to do this?
I use this strategy, first I declare a Handler and a Runnable that way:
private final Observable mObservable = new Observable();
private final static int TIME_STEP_MS = 5;
private final Handler mHandler = new Handler();
private final Runnable mTimeManager = new Runnable()
{
public void run()
{
mObservable.notifyObservers(TIME_STEP_MS);
mHandler.postDelayed(mTimeManager, TIME_STEP_MS);
}
};
Then when I want to start my time manager I just call the mTimeManager.run() and it will start to notify my Observer s (previously added) periodically.
If you need for some reason stop the timer or something you just do that:
mHandler.removeCallbacks(mTimeManager);
[ EDIT - More complete code ]
Ok than let's make it clearer, first I made a custom Observable object like that [that's optional]:
private final Observable mObservable = new Observable()
{
public void notifyObservers()
{
setChanged();
super.notifyObservers();
};
#Override
public void notifyObservers(Object data)
{
setChanged();
super.notifyObservers(data);
};
};
the reason for that is just because I can't call setChanged() outside Observable class - it's protected, if it's not changed it doesn't notify any observer.
The other declarations keep the same as shown before, now I need to start this TimeManager somewhere, my app is a LiveWallpaper and I make all rendering stuff into a class that extends a Thread but you don't need that necessarily, I made a method called resumeDrawing(), this one is called right after super.start(); at my #Override of public synchronized void start() from Thread class, the method looks like that:
public void resumeDrawing()
{
if (!mTimeManagerRunning) // just a boolean field in my class
{
System.err.println("Resuming renderer."); // just for debug
mTimeManager.run();
mTimeManagerRunning = true;
}
else
{
System.err.println("Renderer already running."); // just for debug
}
}
and it's dual:
public void pauseDrawing()
{
if (mTimeManagerRunning)
{
System.err.println("Pausing renderer.");
mHandler.removeCallbacks(mTimeManager);
mTimeManagerRunning = false;
}
else
{
System.err.println("Renderer already paused.");
}
}
Ok, now we can start and stop the time manager, but who's listening? Nobody! so let's add'em: On the constructor of my Renderer I add some Observer s to my mObservable object, one of those is the Renderer itself, so my renderer extends Thread and implements Observer:
#Override // from Observer interface
public void update(Observable arg0, Object arg1)
{
mElapsedMsRedraw += (Integer) arg1;
if (mElapsedMsRedraw >= mDrawingMsPerFrame)
{
mElapsedMsRedraw = 0;
drawEm(); // refresh the canvas and stuff
}
}
to add observers you simply do mObservable.addObserver(THE_OBJECT - Implements Observer)
you can see that I don't re-render my stuff each time I'm notified, that's because I use this TimeManager for other thinks than just refresh the Canvas like updating the position of the objects I want to draw just internally.
So, what you need to slow down the drawing is to change the way your objects change internally while the time passes, I mean your circles and points etc, or you can chance your time step, I recommend the first one.
Was it clearer? I hope it helps.
I would use a timer, or create Animations. You can create Animations that will do all sorts of things including changing transparency over time.
Here's the Android Documentation for Animation Resources
I believe there may be sophisticated ways of doing this, but for my needs I used a simple method that has a lot of advantages:
I first create records of coordinates (and any other data needed) for every point of the drawing -- instead of drawing the points on the spot -- and then reproduce them using a timer (Android handler, preferably). This also offers a lot of possibilities while actual drawing: pause, go faster/slower, go backwards, ...
I don't know if this method can be used for complicated drawings, but it is fine for drawing shapes, curves, surfaces, etc.
To use a SurfaceView for drawing a 2D game in Android, I use this in the main activity's onCreate():
setContentView(new GameView(this));
Which is a reference to this class:
public class GameView extends SurfaceView implements SurfaceHolder.Callback
Additionally, I have a thread with its run() function:
public void run() {
Canvas c;
while (_run) {
c = null;
try {
c = _surfaceHolder.lockCanvas(null);
synchronized (_surfaceHolder) {
_panel.updatePhysics();
_panel.onDraw(c);
}
}
finally { // when exception is thrown above we may not leave the surface in an inconsistent state
if (c != null) {
_surfaceHolder.unlockCanvasAndPost(c);
}
}
}
}
In updatePhysics() I do some calculations. They are more complex than this simple example, of course, but work the same way:
public void updatePhysics() {
GraphicObject.Coordinates coord;
GraphicObject.Speed speed;
for (GraphicObject graphic : _allElements) {
coord = graphic.getCoordinates();
speed = graphic.getSpeed();
coord.setX(coord.getX() + speed.getX());
coord.setY(coord.getY() + speed.getY());
...
}
}
And in onDraw(), I draw everything to the canvas:
#Override
public void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
canvas.drawBitmap(BITMAP, xPos, yPos, null);
...
}
This works fine - everything. And when I tested it on my device, it looked pretty good. But when I gave it to someone else and he did a test game, the objects were moving much faster! Why is this so? Because the thread calls updatePhysics() as often as possible which means that fast devices call this function more often?
How can I prevent this and make the game equally fast on all devices? Something like this?
private long lastRun = System.currentTimeMillis();
public void updatePhysics() {
long millisPassed = System.currentTimeMillis()-lastRun;
...
float newCoord = (coord.getX() + speed.getX()) * millisPassed / 33;
coord.setX(newCoord);
...
}
Thanks for your help!
If you can, use the time directly to calculate all your physics. That would usually work best.
If you have no way to calculate based on time because what you are doing that is just step based and you know that generating the next step does not take much time then you have another option.
You create two threads. The first one advances the state at a fixed rate (and you have to be sure that this works on slow devices at that rate too). The second one takes the current state is sees and draws that. Now the second thread can be as slow as it wants because it simply skips some states (or draws the same state several times if it is faster).
Small example below has one thread that advances some state object and replaces the reference each time so the consuming thread does not need to worry that it's state object gets modified
class GameState {
private int state = 0;
public GameState advanceState() {
GameState result = new GameState();
result.state = this.state + 1;
return result;
}
}
class SurfaceViewImplementation extends SurfaceView {
// the current state
volatile GameState mState = new GameState();
void somewhere() {
Thread fastProducer = new Thread(new Runnable() {
private static final long MAX_WAIT = 1000 / 60;
#Override
public void run() {
while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
long timeBefore = SystemClock.currentThreadTimeMillis();
GameState newState = mState.advanceState();
mState = newState;
long timeAfter = SystemClock.currentThreadTimeMillis();
long timeSpent = timeAfter - timeBefore;
SystemClock.sleep(Math.max(0, MAX_WAIT - timeSpent));
}
}
});
fastProducer.start();
Thread slowConsumer = new Thread(new Runnable() {
#Override
public void run() {
while (!Thread.interrupted()) {
GameState currentState = mState;
longRunningDraw(currentState);
}
}
});
slowConsumer.start();
}
}
That will still fail to give you a speed independant result if the producing thread can't run at the desired rate.
I would save the time when I start rendering the frame(in your case is updatePhysics()), and then next time I would got to this point, I know how much time pass, if it's to fast you can use Thread.Sleep();