Tuesday, January 19, 2010

The Bug Starts Running









The Bug Starts Running


BugRunner fixes the frame rate to be 40 FPS; anything faster makes it almost impossible to move the ant quickly enough to intercept a dropping ball.


The application's constructor loads and starts the BladeRunner sequence:



// load the background MIDI sequence
midisLoader = new MidisLoader( );
midisLoader.load("br", "blade_runner.mid");
midisLoader.play("br", true); // repeatedly play it



Since BugRunner plays one sequence at a time, it's loaded directly via a call to load( ) rather than being specified in a MIDI information file. MidisLoader assumes the sequence is in the Sounds/ subdirectory.


Using a well-known piece of music, like the BladeRunner theme, is a bad idea for a game intended for widespread distribution. The thorny issue of copyright is bound to come up. I've thrown caution to the wind since BladeRunner is one of my favorite sci-fi movies, and the music is great.



BugRunner sets up window listener methods for pausing and resuming the game in a similar manner to the WormChase application in Chapter 3. windowClosing( ) is different:



public void windowClosing(WindowEvent e)
{ bp.stopGame( );

midisLoader.close( );

}



The call to close( ) in MidisLoader ensures the sequence is stopped at termination time.









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