[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 11 ■ Moving Your Action Figure in 2D: Controlling the X and Y Display Screen Coordinates
Now that we have put our Image assets into place, created our Actor object, added him to the Scene Graph,
created a CastingDirector engine, and added our iBagel to the cast, we’re ready to deal with the Game Timing Engine.
Create and Start Your GamePlayLoop: .createStartGameLoop
I am going to jump ahead of the .createSceneGraphNodes() method, which is still our most complex method body
and which I am saving for last, and create a new method called .createStartGameLoop(). Inside of this method
we’re going to create, and then start, our GamePlayLoop object, which we created back in Chapter 7 using the
GamePlayLoop.java class. This class extends the JavaFX AnimationTimer superclass to provide access to the JavaFX
pulse timing engine for our game. Inside of the .createStartGameLoop() method we are going to use the Java new
keyword to create a pulse engine for our game named gamePlayLoop using the GamePlayLoop() constructor method.
After that, we are going to call the .start() method off of this gamePlayLoop object to start the pulse event timing
engine. This call is done by using the following four lines of Java programming logic, which are also shown error-free
in Figure 11-9:
private void createStartGameLoop() {
gamePlayLoop = new GamePlayLoop();
gamePlayLoop.start();
}
Figure 11-9. Create a private void createStartGameLoop() method, and create and .start() the gamePlayLoop object
As you can see at the bottom of Figure 11-9, I have collapsed the other method structures, and I have them in
the same order in the code that they are called within the .start() method, for organization purposes. I start a game
play loop last because I want to make sure I have done absolutely everything else that I need to do to set up the game
environment first, before I start the JavaFX pulse engine firing and launch the game. As you can see, I’m using the Java
method names, and my game code design, to keep me reminded about what I need to do every time that I add some
new game actor, which now that our hero is in place, could be game props, projectiles, enemies, treasure, and so on.
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