Im starting to deal with some stuff in my game that I thought were "minor problems" and one of these are that I get an error every time I shut down my game that looks like this:

    09-05 21:40:58.320: E/AndroidRuntime(30401): FATAL EXCEPTION: Thread-4898
    09-05 21:40:58.320: E/AndroidRuntime(30401): java.lang.NullPointerException
    09-05 21:40:58.320: E/AndroidRuntime(30401): at nielsen.happy.shooter.MainGamePanel.render(MainGamePanel.java:94)
    09-05 21:40:58.320: E/AndroidRuntime(30401): at nielsen.happy.shooter.MainThread.run(MainThread.java:101)

on these lines is my GameViews rendering-method and the line in my Thread that calls my GameViews rendering-method.

Im guessing Something in my surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) is wrong, or maybe Im not ending the tread in the right place.

My surfaceDestroyed-method:

    public void surfaceDestroyed(SurfaceHolder holder) {
    Log.d(TAG, "Surface is being destroyed");
    boolean retry = true;
    ((MainThread)thread).setRunning(false);
    while (retry) {
        try {
            ((MainThread)thread).join();
            retry = false;
        } catch (InterruptedException e) {
        }
    }
    Log.d(TAG, "Thread was shut down cleanly");
}

Also, In my activity for this View my onPaus, onDestoy and onStop are empty, do I maybe need to add something there?

The crash occurs when I press my home-button on the phone, or any other button that makes the game stop. But as I understand it the onPaus is called when you press the Home-button.. This is really new territory for me so Im sorry if im missing something obvious or something really big.

adding my surfaceCreated method asweel since that is where I start this thread:

    public void surfaceCreated(SurfaceHolder holder) {
    controls = new GameControls(this);
    setOnTouchListener(controls);
    timer1.schedule(new Task(this), 0, delay1);
    thread.setRunning(true);
    thread.start();
}

and aslong as this is running, my game is rendering and updating.