Multiple Graphics Objects?

I'm trying to make a game with many tiny tiles. The 2d array holding these tiles is 1000x1000 in size and expected to get bigger. In this game I will need to paint a color to each tile depending if it's dirt, grass, sky, etc. Obviously, with 1 million tiles, painting each tile everytime the paintComponent method is called is a terrible idea. But the array is subject to change by the user from time to time. What I wanted to do was create multiple graphics objects and paint them on top of one another like layers. This way, the player and ai layer that will constantly update won't also make the more inactive layers paint themselves as well. I don't know how to do this and I tried to make multiple graphics objects but got errors. NullPointerException. I'm confused on how Graphics works because I know it's abstract (don't even know what that is). So how do I do this?

See my beautiful diagram:

http://img200.imageshack.us/img200/7842/layersi.png

The game is centered completely around this tile system and cannot be changed. The gameplay is centered around it.

Code:

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        public void updateWorldGrid()
        {
                for(int r = 0; r < 1000; r++)
                {
                        for (int c = 0; c < 1000; c++)
                        {
                                worldImage.drawRect(r*5, c*5, 5, 5);
                        }
                }
        }

        public void paintComponent(Graphics g)
        {
                super.paintComponent(g);

                updateWorldGrid();
                drawWorld();

                for(WorldObject w: WorldObjectArray)
                {
                        draw(g, w);
                }
        }

        public void drawWorld()
        {
                paint(worldImage);
        }

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Just trying to get this to run. It doesn't. This line has NullPointerException-

Code:

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worldImage.drawRect(r*5, c*5, 5, 5);

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It looks like worldImage is null. You can check this using System.out.println() just before you call drawRect().

Quote:

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The game is centered completely around this tile system and cannot be changed.

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Cannot? Anyway, I'll just observe that it's one thing to have a whole bunch of addressable components of the world and quite another for them to be components with all the overhead that that entails. Some widgets in the Swing library - like table cells which are rather tile like - use the idea of a renderer which acts as a "rubber stamp" capable of doing whatever visual stuff is needed whereever it is needed.

Also look into Graphics#copyArea(...)

db

Yes, CANNOT.

I already knew it was null. Why is it null? It's not like I can do Graphics worldImage = new Graphics();

Code:

---

public class Display extends JPanel
{
        private static ArrayList<WorldObject> WorldObjectArray;
        private static WorldGrid World;
        private static JFrame Frame;
        private static Graphics worldImage;

        . . .

        public void updateWorldGrid()
        {
                for(int r = 0; r < 1000; r++)
                {
                        for (int c = 0; c < 1000; c++)
                        {
                                worldImage.drawRect(r*5, c*5, 5, 5);
                        }
                }
        }

        . . .

}

---

Why don't you just use something like a BufferedImage, draw all of the tiles on at the beginning, then update only tiles that have changed when appropriate? Then all you'd need to do in paintComponent was draw the image.

But worldImage is null because you never set it to anything. You get a Graphics instance as a parameter in paintComponent(), if you wanted to go that route.

That's all the information I needed. Now I will look into BufferedImages

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrFish

That's all the information I needed. Now I will look into BufferedImages

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Hm, ok. Let us know how it goes.

Yah it works great. It draws the grid really quick now!