Best way to implement game loop without freezing UI thread
- by Matt H
I'm trying to make a simple 2D game in Java.
So far I have a JFrame, with a menubar, and a class which extends JPanel and overrides it's paint method. Now, I need to get a game loop going, where I will update the position of images and so on. However, I'm stuck at how best to achieve this. Should I use multi-threading, because surely, if you put an infinite loop on the main thread, the UI (and thus my menu bar) will freeze up?
Here's my code so far:
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import javax.swing.JPanel;
@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class GameCanvas extends JPanel {
public void paint(Graphics g) {
while (true) {
g.setColor(Color.DARK_GRAY);
try {
Thread.sleep(100);
} catch (InterruptedException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
}
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JMenu;
import javax.swing.JMenuBar;
import javax.swing.JMenuItem;
@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class Main extends JFrame {
GameCanvas canvas = new GameCanvas();
final int FRAME_HEIGHT = 400;
final int FRAME_WIDTH = 400;
public static void main(String args[]) {
new Main();
}
public Main() {
super("Game");
JMenuBar menuBar = new JMenuBar();
JMenu fileMenu = new JMenu("File");
JMenuItem startMenuItem = new JMenuItem("Pause");
menuBar.add(fileMenu);
fileMenu.add(startMenuItem);
super.add(canvas);
super.setVisible(true);
super.setSize(FRAME_WIDTH, FRAME_WIDTH);
super.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
super.setJMenuBar(menuBar);
}
}
Any pointers/tips? Also, where should I put my loop? In my main class, or my GameCanvas class?
Any help is appreciated, thanks.
