Best way to implement game loop without freezing UI thread

Question

I\'m trying to make a simple 2D game in Java.

So far I have a JFrame, with a menubar, and a class which extends JPanel and overrides it\'s

Answer 1

Your game loop (model) should not be anywhere near any of your GUI classes (view). It uses your GUI classes--but even that you probably want to do through an intermediary (controller). A good way to ensure that you are doing it right is to check that your model doesn't have a single "include javax.swing.???".

The best thing you could do is to keep the game loop in it's own thread. Whenever you want to make a change in the GUI, use SwingWorker or whatever the young kids use now to force it onto the GUI thread for just that one operation.

This is actually awesome because it makes you think in terms of GUI Operations (which would constitute your controller). For instance, you might have a class called "Move" that would have the GUI logic behind a move. Your game loop might instantiate a "Move" with the right values (item to move, final location) and pass it to a GUI loop for processing.

Once you get to that point, you realize that simply adding a trivial "undo" for each GUI operation allows you to easily undo any number of operations. You will also find it easier to replace your Swing GUI with a web GUI...