The Engine
The Engine is a collection of general-purpose utility classes and functions written in Java created by Dominic Zirbel [dominiczirbel@gmail.com]. This software is open-source and free to use under the GNU General Public License, Version 3 (http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html).
About
These classes are intended primarily as a convenience for graphics-intensive Java applications such as games or graphics-oriented programs. Currently only two dimensional applications are supported. The Engine's client programs are:
- Game of Life [github.com/dzirbel/Game-of-Life]
Features
The Engine currently includes the features:
- Hardware-accelerated image rendering
- Full-screen exclusive windows
- Customizeable tooltips
- High-level mouse and keyboard input handling
- List utilities, including binary searches and quicksort
- Display capability, image speed, and other tests
Future
The Engine is currently evolving along with the Game of Life project with the sole purpose of supporting the Game of Life. However I do intend to add generality and functionality to the Engine. Some potential upcoming features are:
- Comprehensive image loading and data management
- Rendering performance
- File I/O
Using the Engine
The Engine is functional software that gives desktop Java applications some amount of graphics support. To include the Engine in a program, simply include the most recent jar binary, which can be found in the root repository folder named "Engine X.X.XX.jar". To download, either select the file and "View Raw" or download the entire repository as a zip and extract it.
Images
With the Engine, loading images from the disk is simple, and rendering utalizes hardware acceleration. The AcceleratedImage class allows for this functionality. Typically, loading an image is as simple as instantiating an AcceleratedImage with the filename of the image to load. The AcceleratedImage can then be transformed with an AffineTransform and rendered to an arbitrary graphics context. See the AcceleratedImage documentation for more information.
User Input
User input from the mouse and keyboard is encompassed by the Listener class. To use the functionality of the Listener, there are two steps. First, request notifications for specific types of events (i.e. mouse buttons presses, key releases) and then create methods to handle these events when they occur. The Listener uses reflection to invoke these methods, and is based on the event handling from java.awt.event.
Display
The Engine has the ability to create a full-screen exclusive window which allows for more control over rendering than a regular window. The DisplayMonitor class handles this functionality, and is also able to resize the display resolution (if supported by the operating system and hardware). Finally, the DisplayMonitor tracks the size of the screen (in pixels).
Tooltips
The Engine contains the Tooltip class which represent tooltips on the screen, which are activated when the user hovers over a certain area of the screen for a certain amount of time. Tooltips are lightweight and extremely configurable. See the Tooltip class for more information.
List Utilities
Finally, the Engine contains the ListUtil class which includes many common utilities for lists, including binary searching, sorting with quicksort, and adding elements, while keeping a list sorted, based on a binary search. See the ListUtil class for more information.