I would like to resize multiple imageIcons that I have attached to certain panels, but I'm not sure how to do that. After much research I've attempted to use .getScaledInstance but have had no luck, is that what I'm supposed to use? Since I define my panels outside of the main class but need to use the scaled instances of the images in multiple methods, would I add a line such as
image.getImage().getScaledInstance(30,30,whatever);
or would I need to do a different action?
getScaledInstance doesn't effect the original image, but instead returns a new instance of the image scaled to meet your parameters, make sure you are assigning the result to a variable, for example
image = image.getImage().getScaledInstance(30,30,whatever);
Then pass this to your what ever needs to use it
Beware, the quality of the operation is pretty poor, especially over a large range.
Take a look at
Quality of Image after resize very low -- Java
Java: maintaining aspect ratio of JPanel background image
The Perils of Image.getScaledInstance()
For details and ideas.
Related
I want to draw Strings in my Libgdx game but i cant use BitMap Fonts because the scale of my game is to smal to use them.
It sounds like you mean the scale of your viewport is too small to show fonts correctly. There are two solutions. The first is better for legibility while the second is quick and dirty.
One is to use a second viewport for the UI that has an appropriate scale for text. You would first call gameViewport.apply(), draw the game, and end the batch. Then use uiViewport.apply() and then draw the UI. The downside with this method would be if you want to draw text that aligns with moving objects in the game, you would have to use the two viewports to convert coordinates. Otherwise, this is the ideal method to get a crisp looking UI. Ideally you would use a ScreenViewport and select a font size at runtime based on the screen dimensions, either by shipping your game with multiple versions of the font at different scales, or by using FreeTypeFontGenerator.
The second method is to scale down all your text. First call bitmapFont.setUseIntegerPositions(false) do it won't round off positions to integers. Then call bitmapFont.setScale() with however much you want to shrink it to fit in your game viewport.
There is a gdx-freetype project:
https://www.badlogicgames.com/wordpress/?p=2300
and it uses TrueType fonts as source to generate bitmap font on the fly.
Not sure how stable this is - didn't use it.
I am currently using pixels as units for placing objects within my world, however this can get tedious because I only ever place objects every 16 pixels. For example, I would like to be able to place an object at position 2 and have the object rendered at the pixel position 32.
I was wondering if the best way to do this is simply having a pixel-to-unit variable and multiplying/dividing based on what I need to be doing with pixels or if there is a better way.
You shouldn't use constant a pixel-to-unit conversion, as this would lead to different behavior on different screen sizes/resolutions.
Also don't forget about different aspect ratios, you also need to take care about them.
The way you should solve this problem is using Viewports.
Some of them support virtual screen sizes, which are what you are looking for. You can calculate everything in your virtual space, and Libgdx converts those things to pixels for you.
They also take care about different aspect ratios in different ways.
The FitViewport for example shows black borders, if the aspect ratio is not the same as the virtual one.
The StretchViewport instead of showing black borders stretches the image to fit the screen.
I'm trying to develop a Java program that does the following:
uses a background picture of a network diagram of clients
positions an image of a bandwidth graph to respective client
refreshes the image of graph every 5 seconds which it fetches from another program that constantly produces snapshots of bandwidth
Now, I can set the background picture and I'm pretty confident that I will be able to refresh the images by using a timer. What I am trying to plan out is how I am going to position these images to the respective clients which is displayed in the background picture. I did some research and it appears that I have several options but I want to make sure I am choosing the right one before I run into problems further down the line.
It seems to me that using a GridBagLayout would be the choice for me, however I would like a second opinion for a more experienced population. If using a GridBagLayout is the correct choice, could you recommend any good tutorials that would help me understand this Layout Manager? Please keep in mind that I have limited experience with Java, especially with GUI oriented Java.
EDIT: If I am not explaining the concept well enough please let me know.
check this out-
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/layout/visual.html
GridLayout is likely to meet your needs and it is easy to use - the assumption I make is that image of bandwidth graph is the same/fixed ...
Look for an example here
http://www.roseindia.net/tutorialsearch/?t=java+gridlayout+color
Try Google the keyword "GridLayout" - there are plenty of hits ...
If you want to do advanced layouts, you should take a look at MigLayout.
It's an extremely flexible layout manager that can pretty much act as a replacement for any/all of the existing Swing layout managers. It's worth using if you want to do difficult / complex layouts.
It feels more like a HTML table layout tool, enabling multi-column spans etc. and arbitrary scaling rules.
The "Quick Start Guide" is very good with lots of examples - I'd suggest taking a look at that if you want to evaluate MigLayout for your project.
If the 'bandwidth graph' image(s) is on top of the BG image, look to OverlayLayout
A layout manager to arrange components over the top of each other. ..
OTOH I would not use a layout strategy for this, instead..
Create a BufferedImage the size of the BG.
Paint the BG to the image.
Display the image in a label.
When it comes time to paint the graphs, get a Graphics instance for the image in the label, and paint them to that. If the graphs are always the same size and shape and do not have transparency, you can simply paint them. Otherwise, draw the BG first.
I have an Swing app whose main panel is divided into a 3x2 grid of charts, and the app can be resized, with the charts (JFreeChart) auto scaling. One of these panels I would like to display the Apdex rating in, which is just text (e.g. '0.89 [0.5]*'). We use the application to display on a monitor visible to everyone, and scale multiple instances of the app that monitor different data centers. Scaling the Apdex font size to fit available panel space is what I'm after.
Any good ideas?
After re-reading and rethinking the question I would suggest for you to try calculating it yourself by use of FontMatrics stringWidth with the string and iteratively increasing the font size until you can, i.e. the size evaluated by you versus the available space.
A ready algorithm would be nice but I didn't hear of any.
Good luck, Boro.
I'd render it off-screen at some suitably large point size, as shown here, and then down-sample it using AffineTransformOp, as shown here.
I have a custom UI drawn for my java application. Right now I draw the entire UI from scratch. I know for a fact some parts of the UI are static. I know I could save these static parts to an image, but will this yield a improvement in performance (Since even an image must be drawn every frame)?
Is it plausible to save a reference to the Graphics2D object after the UI has been drawn and assign that to the new graphics object every frame (starting from a point where all the static components are drawn)?
Thanks in advance,
Alan
You don't need to redraw everything in every frame. So if you have static parts of your UI (or even dynamic parts that you know haven't changed since last frame) then you simply don't need to repaint them.
In my code (Swing games and simulations mostly) I usually try to follow the following rules:
Pre-prepare static images (e.g. BufferedImage textures for UI elements)
Override the paintComponent() method for each UI element individually to do the painting
Only call the repaint() method of any given UI element if I know that something has changed
Call repaint() in a timer-based loop for animation, but only call it on the portion of the UI that is being animated (e.g. a nested JPanel)
This approach seems to work and perform pretty well (though I'd welcome comments if there are ways to improve it!!)
There are two main optimizations you can do here. The first is to make sure that when you cause your UI to be repainted, usually done by calling repaint, make sure you call the version of repaint where you specify a rectangle that has changed. Only make the rectangle big enough to encompass the parts that actually have changed, not the static parts. For this to be effective you also have to pay attention to the clipRect in the Graphics2D object you are passed in paint(). That is used by the system to tell you exactly what needs to be repainted, in the above case usually the rectangle that you passed to repaint. Don't paint anything that lies entirely outside that rectangle.
You can also get significant performance improvements by caching the static parts of your interface in an image. Writing an image is by far the fastest way of getting things onto a screen. My measurements indicate that small images are faster than even a few simple drawing primitives. However you need to make sure the image characteristics match the screen, by using createCompatibleImage().
Of course you may be using a lot of memory to get this speedup. I would recommend testing to see if you need to do image caching before implementing it.
if some parts of the screen is completely static, then never redraw that part. Don't do a full-screen/window clear, just clear the part of the screen/window that changes all the time.
This way, you don't unnecessarily redraw the static image.