This class provides the features necessary to implement simple non blocking games.
The games that can be created out of NonBlockingGame are based on a simple board grid of at most 1024 cells (e.g., 32x32, or any combinations less than 1024 cells). Each cell has a background color, and a colored symbol.
This class is used by having another class derive from it and implement the two functions: initialize() and gameLoop(). initialize() is called exactly once, on the first frame of the game. It is used to make first time initializations of the game state (such as setting the board in its initial position, for instance in chess). However, gameLoop() is called at every frame of the game. The game starts when the function start() is called on the object you created.
For this reason the simplest game that can run is created by:
public my_game() { super (1, "myuserid", "myapikey", 10, 10); }
public static void main (String args[]) {
my_game g = new my_game();
g.start();
}
}
This game does not do anything, but it is the minimal code that will run a game. Note that the constructor of my_game passes 5 parameters to the constructor of NonBlockingGame(). The first three parameters are the classic parameters that the constructor of bridges.connect.Bridges takes (e.g., assignmentID, username, apikey), the last two are the size of the game board.
To change the board, two functions are used. setBGColor() change the background color of a particular cell. It takes three parameters, the first two identify the cell of the board to change, and the last one is a color from a color palette provided by NamedColor. drawSymbol() takes four parameters, the first two identify the cell of the board to change, the third is a symbol from a symbol palette provided by NamedSymbol, the fourth is the color that symbol shold be drawn in and provided by NamedColor.
For instance, a very simple initialize() could look like:
drawSymbol(0, 0, NamedSymbol.sword, NamedColor.blue);
}
Note that the size of the board was set at 10x10 and that drawing on a cell that does not exist will lead to an error. One can specify a gameboard of a different size by changing the parameters to the NonBlockingGame constructor. However, the game board can not be more than 1024 cells in total, so a 15x15 board is possible, a 32x32 board is the largest square board possible, and a rectangular 64x16 rectangular board is also possible. But a 100x20 board would be 2000 cells and is not possible. For instance a board of 16 rows and 64 columns can be created defining the my_game constructor as:
public my_game() { super(1, "myuserid", "myapikey", 16, 64); }
The bridges game engine will call the gameLoop() function at each frame of the game. You can write this function to modify the state of the game board using setBGColor() and drawSymbol(). For instance, the following gameLoop() will color the board randomly one cell at a time.
setBGColor(Math.random()*10, Math.random()*10, NamedColor.lightsalmon);
}
The gameLoop can also probe the state of some keys of the keyboard using functions keyUp(), keyLeft(), keyDown(), keyRight(), keyW(), keyA(), keyS(), keyD(), keySpace(), and keyQ(). These functions return a boolean that indicate whether the key is pressed at that frame or not. For instance, the following code will only color the board randomly when the up arrow is pressed.
setBGColor(Math.random()*10, Math.rand()*10, NamedColor.lightsalmon);
}
- See also
- See tutorial at http://bridgesuncc.github.io/tutorials/NonBlockingGame.html
- Author
- Erik Saule
- Date
- 7/21/19
Public Member Functions inherited from bridges.games.GameBase
1.8.14