[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 8 ■ Creating Your Actor Engine: Design the Characters for Your Game and Define Their Capabilities
The remaining methods in the Actor class will be what are commonly termed “getter” and “setter" methods
because these methods provide access to the data variables inside of the class. Using getter and setter methods is the
correct way to do things, because doing this implements the Java concept (and advantage) of encapsulation, which
allows Java objects to be self-contained vessels of object attributes (variable data values) and behaviors (methods).
Accessing Actor Variables: Creating Getter and Setter Methods
One of the really powerful (and time saving, as you are about to see) features of NetBeans is that it will write all of your
.get() and .set() methods for each of your object and data variables for you automatically. We will be using this handy
feature during this book whenever possible, so you can get used to using this time saving feature to write lots of Java
8 code for you, accelerating your Java 8 game code production output! You access this auto-coding feature by using
the Source menu, and its Insert Code submenu, as can be seen in Figure 8-9. As you can see, there is also a keyboard
short-cut (Alt-Insert); using either of these will bring up a floating Generate menu, which is shown highlighted in red
in the bottom center of Figure 8-9.
Figure 8-9. Use Source ➤ Insert Code menu (or Alt+Insert) to bring up a Generate Getter and Setter dialog and select all
Click on the Getter and Setter option, shown highlighted in the middle of the Generate floating menu, and a
Generate Getters and Setters dialog will appear, which is shown on the right side of Figure 8-9. Make sure that the
hierarchy is open, and that the check box next to Actor is selected, which will automatically select all of the variables
inside of the class, in this case, a dozen variables also shown selected on the right hand side of Figure 8-9.
Once all of these are selected, click on the Generate button at the bottom of the dialog and generate the
24 .get() and .set() methods that you would have to type in manually if NetBeans 8.0 did not offer this handy
IDE feature.
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