Creating a Interactive GUI for a java game

Question

Hey guys I'm creating a game similar to farmville in java and I'm just wondering how would I implement the interactive objects/buttons that the user would usually click to interact with the game client.

I do not want to use the swing library (generic windows looky likey objects), I would like to import custom images for my buttons and assign button like properties to those images which would be used for the GUI.

Any advice? Any pointers? I can't seem to find that information through youtube or some other java gaming sites as they're only showing simple example using swing.

Any help would be deeply appreciated thanks!

Regards Gareth

Answer 1

You can use JButton, just override the paint function. and draw what ever you want there. It takes a while until you get it at the first time how this works. I recommend you to read a little about the event-dispatching thread (here is java's explanation)

And here is some code that I wrote so you have a simple reference.

import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.GridLayout;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;

import javax.swing.ImageIcon;
import javax.swing.JButton;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JOptionPane;


public class Test extends JButton implements ActionListener{

    private static final long serialVersionUID = 1L;
    Image img;

        /**  constuctor     **/
    public Test(String tImg, JFrame parent){
        this.img = new ImageIcon(tImg).getImage();
        this.addActionListener(this);

    }


           /***********    this is the function you want to learn  ***********/
    @Override
    public void paint(Graphics g){
        g.drawImage(this.img, 0, 0, null);
    }

    @Override
    public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent arg0) {
        // TODO do some stuff when its clicked
        JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "you clicked the button");
    }




    public static void main(String[] args) {
        JFrame f = new JFrame();
        Test t = new Test("pics.gif", f);
        f.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        f.setLayout(new GridLayout(1, 1));
        f.add(t);
        f.setSize(400,600);
        f.setVisible(true);
    }

}

Answer 2

Do you really not want to use Swing, or do you just not want the default look and feel of a JButton and other swing controls? What does " (generic windows looky likey objects), " mean?

There are many sources out there that describe customizing buttons to include images on top of them: Creating a custom button in Java

JButton and other controls have all the events and methods associated with adding click listeners, etc. You probably don't want to create your own control. We do not have enough information to go off of, for example what does "interactive objects" mean?

If you simply want to add an icon to a JButton, use the constructor that takes an Icon.