FSEM, Active Rendering & Swing

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

Hey Everyone. I am new to the whole graphics thing to please bare with me =x.
There are going to be a lot of questions here sorry haha.

i am making a game that is played in FSEM, using active rendering and it is going to incorporate smaller movable windows inside of it. I don’t want to use JInternalFrames because the upper bar looks ugly (I want the game to have its own look instead of platform specific). I had a few ideas about how to do this but all seemed to fail terribly…

The game uses no Jpanels it is basically just g.drawImage(); to the screen (This could be a problem) Maybe i have to use a JLayerdPane have a background pane that holds the game play graphics and such and then other panels that work as windows over that. Unfortunately for me i have no idea how to g.draw w/e into a panel or would i even have to do this… wow the more i write this the more of an idiot i think i am :smiley:

Swing Issue:
when i added a simple JTextArea and JTextField as one component and set the desired location and size to the frame it always expands to the full size of the screen. This is also accompanied by flickering of the now full screen component over the painted graphics. Only after i minimized the window and reopened it would it stop flickering. then after a few key presses in the JTextField the program would lockup and i could have to force quit it. I think this is caused by the active rendering, The swing components being repainted and updated and such a fast pace. So I added:

            SwingUtilities.invokeAndWait(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    paintComponents(getGraphics());
                }
            });

to the render loop. This was a Hit and Miss fix. sometimes it works great but the lockups still occur.

For all i know this could be and probably is a stupid question. I know i need to learn more about how FSEM and swing work… lets just say graphics in general haha. but some help would be most appreciated. Im not sure if i gave all the info needed so please ask for w/e u may need. i have not decided if i want to post source yet but anything else then go for it.

Thanks for your time =D

#2

Hi,

You’re right onto the problems, and these are not easy things to solve. Most people here actually find swing such a head-ache that they don’t use it at all.

You may want to avoid using swing compponents in the game because they’re very inefficiently painted - remember that each component has its background painted, even when they overlap so it’s slow. If you just want movable windows and text fields then I think you should implement them yourself. Text fields would be hard to do, maybe you can find a non-swing one somewhere?

If you really want to use Swing, I’ve got a game with source you can download here (http://www.java-gaming.org/forums/index.php?topic=18019.0) which uses actively rendered Swing components for the menus, and a passively-rendered textfield at the bottom (which is not painted every frame). Look at GameDesktopPane (extends JLayeredPane), GameFrame and ViewPane. But I think you should steer clear of swing if you want to paint the components every frame.

good luck :slight_smile:
Keith

#3

How do you even start a JOGL window in FSEM?

#4

Ick, no! I think you have the wrong message board for that kind of thing.

Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

#5

[quote]Ick, no! I think you have the wrong message board for that kind of thing.
[/quote]
Lol yeah i obviously am :P, im a terrible person xD

[quote]You may want to avoid using swing compponents in the game because they’re very inefficiently painted - remember that each component has its background painted, even when they overlap so it’s slow. If you just want movable windows and text fields then I think you should implement them yourself. Text fields would be hard to do, maybe you can find a non-swing one somewhere?
[/quote]
Yeah i thought so. I have a good idea how to implement my own windowing system, basically using a lot of rectangles and mouse/action listeners although i have no idea how to start with the textfields. This in a way feels like its being redundant since swing does it all, but for some reason theres no way to modify it easily for active rendering. I would think there would be something that would be more active rendering friendly made by sun since they say they support gaming… maybe i just have to do some more research.

Thanks for all the help any more info would be great.

Also another question would it be wise to use another API for 2d work im using java2D atm and im thinking i want to add a simple 3D env. to the game. just wondering some Pref / Exp with them. Thanks again.