[JAVA][Beginning Java 8 Games Development]

Chapter 17 ■ Enhancing Game Play: Creating a Scoring Engine, Adding Treasure and an Enemy Auto-Attack Engine
Figure 17-43. Add private void shootProjectile() method and code the if(!takeSides) and if(takeSides) if-else statements
If you now use your Run ➤ Project work process you will see your iBeagle animate on screen, shoot a bullet, and
retreat quickly back off-screen. The next level of realism that we need to add into our code is to have the iBeagle pause
for a second while he aims and shoots the bullet, because currently it looks like he is hitting an invisible barrier and
bouncing back off-screen. We will do this by adding counter logic into the if(shootBullet) conditional statement in the
.update() method. Let’s do that next, so that we have a completely professional Enemy auto-attack sequence!
Making the Enemy Pause Before Firing: pauseCounter Variable
To make the Enemy pause on screen, so that his shooting action looks more realistic, and so that the InvinciBagel
character has some time to try and tackle him (which we are going to assign ten scoring points to a bit later on),
let’s add an integer pauseCounter variable and a boolean launchIt variable at the top of our Enemy.java class, as
is shown highlighted in Figure 17-44. Inside of the if(shootBullet) conditional statement, after the shootProjectile()
method call, place an if(pauseCounter >= 60) conditional structure, and inside of it, set launchIt equal to true,
and reset the pauseCounter variable to zero. In the else part of the condition, increment the pauseCounter by one
using pauseCounter++ and then all we have to do is to implement the launchIt boolean flag into our initiateAttack()
method and we will have an Enemy character who takes his time when he aims and shoots at the InvinciBagel
character. Your Java code for this if(shootBullet) if-else structure can be seen in Figure 17-44, and should look like the
following code:
if(shootBullet) {
shootProjectile();
if(pauseCounter >= 60) {
launchIt = true;
pauseCounter = 0;
} else { pauseCounter++ }
}
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