hello guys!
i was just wondering, how do java game programmers create the map of platform games? (like mario , contra and other games like that) do they draw the whole map and show only a part of it? or draw them as the player approaches? or do they use another process? thanks!!!

I'm asking this because I have a project in which I need to create a side scrolling game

Although I haven't attempted it before, I'd assume you'd have a particular zone renderred on the screen with a type of "cover" over it. Either that or only render certain pixels ahead of the borders on a pane.

The position of your character would, obviously determine when the screen will be renderred on the side...

Bah this has given me some ambition to make a game like this @_@

oh.. ok, umm.. how do you create the level then? (im doing the game using only drawRect and other draw... methods)

I suppose you're using a GCanvas, or most likely the GraphicsProgram from the acm.program package?

You could have GCanvases pre-painted with components and when you advance a level, simply set the contentpane to a particular GCanvas of interest.

I think it may be better for me to produce an example, but that might take a bit of time --

noooo... im using simple methods, just shapes.. but ill check what GCanvases is =) thanks edwards!

im not really good in java, i just started 3 months ago, so im not that familiar with some of the classes in java. i was going to use JPanel and the draw methods to create my side scrolling game, but im not making any progress. cant seem to get the logic of how to create and display the levels =)

Platform games are generally tile-based. So use a 2D array to store your map tiles. You only draw the tiles that are visible within the viewport (what the play can see on the screen). You'd basically have a map pointer that keeps track of what position in the map data it should start drawing. Using different layers (different Z-depth) you can create parallax scrolling backgrounds.

Don't use JPanel for drawing all these graphics. I never heard of GCanvas (i haven't done games in java) but if its designed for drawing graphics and game sprites, then it'll probably already be setup for double buffering.

oh.. ok! thanks ill google GCanvas NOW! =) thanks