[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 9 ■ Controlling Your Action Figure: Implementing Java Event Handlers and Using Lambda Expressions
Figure 9-8. Showing the License Agreement dialog (left) and the download and update progress bar (right) in NetBeans
Select the “I accept the terms in all of the license agreements” checkbox, and click on the Update button, to start
the downloading and installation process. As you can see on the bottom-right of Figure 9-8, a progress bar will tell you
exactly how much has been downloaded, as well as what is being downloaded and installed onto the system.
Let’s spend the remainder of this chapter taking a look at event handling, and the event-related classes in Java
and JavaFX that we can use to provide different types of event handling to our Java 8 game development efforts.
Event Handling: Adding Interactivity to Your Games
One could argue that event handing is at the very foundation and core of game development, as without a way to
interface with the game play logic and actors, you really don’t have much of a game at all. I am going to cover the Java
and JavaFX event handling related classes during this section of the chapter, and then we’ll implement keypad event
handing, so that we can support using the arrow keys to navigate our InvinciBagel character around the screen. After
that, we’ll turn that Java 7 compatible code into Java 8 compatible lambda expressions, and then we will be ready to
cover sprite movement around the screen during the next chapter of the book. The first thing I want to talk about
before we start dissecting Java and JavaFX classes is the different types of events that are handled for games, from
the arrow keys (DPAD on Smartphones) to keyboard (or remotes for iTV) to mouse (or trackball on Smartphones)
to touchscreen (Smartphones and Tablets) to game controllers (Game Consoles and iTV Sets) to gyroscopes and
accelerometers (Smartphones and Tablets) to motion controllers such as the Leap Motion and Razer Hydra Portal.
Types of Controllers: What Types of Events Should We Handle?
One of the key things to look at is what is the most logical approach to supporting game play related events, such
as arrow keys; mouse clicks; touchscreen events; game controller buttons (A, B, C and D); and more advanced
controllers, such as gyroscopes and accelerometers that are available on Android, Kindle, Tizen, and iOS consumer
electronics devices. This decision will be driven by the hardware devices that a game is targeted to run on; if a game
needs to run everywhere, then code for handling different event types, and even different programming approaches to
event handling, will ultimately be required. We’ll take a look at what input events are currently supported in Java 8.
It is also interesting to note that Java 8 and JavaFX apps are already working on these embedded platforms, and
I’d put money on native support on open platforms (Android, Tizen, Chrome, Ubuntu), and proprietary platforms
that currently support Java technology (Windows, Blackberry, Samsung Bada, LGE WebOS, Firefox OS, Opera, etc.), at
some point in time in the near future. The future of Java 8 is bright, thanks to JavaFX and hardware platform support!
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