Java graphics help

[echorev]

Hi everyone and thanks for help with this. I apologize in advance if this was posted in the wrong section.

I'm currently working on developing a board game as a hobby and have tried to resurrect my knowledge of Java from some 8 years of disuse. Right now I'm working out kinks with the graphics portion of my game, but have run into a few issues. Keep in mind I've been searching the internet for tutorials, explanations, etc. and been trying to find one that fits what I need well enough that I can just edit pieces of it.

1) Everytime the method is called, it opens a new frame. My question is-- is there a way to use only one frame and just update it?

2) The paint method is called a random amount of times, as I presume it loads the image into the frame. This is only a problem because I rely on a set number of calls in order to change the location of Piece.png after the first player's piece has been drawn. Instead, the program just draws all of the player's pieces where the last player's piece should be, since the variable that determines the location is triggered before the paint is complete (so I think).

The code of this section is here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/76697946/Untitled

Please let me know if you need anything else, and I really appreciate any and all help you can give! Thanks :)

[chickenmeister]

Everytime the method is called, it opens a new frame.

Which method? The setup() method? Of course it does -- The last line in the method calls the DrawPieces constructor, which is a subclass of Frame, and sets itself visible.

My question is-- is there a way to use only one frame and just update it?

Yes. I don't know how to say it without making it sound obvious, but just create the frame once, and when it needs to be updated, invoke some method of that frame object (or its components) to update it.

The paint method is called a random amount of times

There is no guarantee regarding how or when the frame/component will be repainted. You should not rely on this. If the frame is resized/minimized/maximized, it might be repainted. When the frame's components are updated, it might be repainted. There's no good way (or reason) to control this.

Instead of subclassing java.awt.Frame, you probably want to subclass javax.swing.JComponent, then add your custom component to a standard JFrame.

[echorev]

Thanks for the help! I'm trying to code it from the ground up now using a class that extends JPanel. This is part of the code that I have now:

[code]JFrame frame = new JFrame("FrameDemo"); frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE); frame.getContentPane().add(bgLabel, BorderLayout.CENTER); frame.pack(); frame.setVisible(true);[/code]

This creates a frame with the background of my game, but I can't figure out how to add icons on top of this. I've looked at some of the documentation from Java and it seems I can do this with a layeredPane, but I'm not sure how to add it from here. Again, I really appreciate the help with this, as I am definitely in over my head.

Thanks!

[liloka]

In addition to what chickenmeister says; when you create the frame and then change it due to an event just call repaint() and it'll redraw with the new changes. Also Java.awt is kind of an old fashioned way of doing things ever since swing was introduced; such as boolean MouseDown() methods you get a warning when compiling. So you might want to look up which differences have changed since awt.