[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 10 ■ Directing the Cast of Actors: Creating a Casting Director Engine and Creating the Bagel Actor Class
Figure 10-16. Override public boolean .collide() method body, for our use later on during a collision detection chapter
We have made a lot of good progress in this chapter, creating a Casting Director and the Star for your game!
Summary
In this tenth chapter, we added two key classes to the game: the CastingDirector.java class and the Bagel.java class.
The first performs a cast management and collision management functionality, and the second adds the primary
actor for the game, so that we can start to work on how the InvinciBagel moves around the screen. We looked at a
diagram of our current package and class structure and how the new classes are going to fit into an overall game
engine design strategy that we are implementing during this book.
We learned what a Java interface is, and how Java interfaces will allow us to control what’s implemented by other
developers regarding our classes. We also learned about the Java Collection Framework, which provides things such
as Arrays, Lists and Sets to use to provide data store functionality for our Java 8 and JavaFX applications (games).
We learned about the java.util package and its List interface, as well as the ArrayList class, and how the
ArrayList class implements this List interface. We learned about Elements, Keys, Values, and
Types. We learned that the List and ArrayList objects have a structure and an order, whereas the Set and HashSet
objects do not have a specific order, and cannot have duplicate elements.
Next we created your CastingDirector.java class, to manage the Actor objects that will need to be added to the
game and removed from the game. This class will also maintain the List structure that will be used for the
collision detection logic that we will be adding later on during the book in Chapter 16.
Finally, we created our first Actor related class, the Bagel class, which extends the Hero superclass and will allow
us to put the primary InvinciBagel Actor object character into our game Scene and onto the Stage. We created the
Bagel() constructor method and used the @Override keyword to override the .update() and .collide() methods, so
that we have someplace to construct our programming logic relating to this character during the rest of the book.
In the next chapter, we’re going to take a look at how to move the game sprite around the screen using this
KeyEvent event handling structure that we have created during this chapter, as well as how to ascertain the boundary
(edges) of the screen, character direction, movement velocity, and related animation and movement considerations.
www.it-ebooks.info
227