Question

I am currently working on a small Java game in eclipse, and am knee deep in a few thousand lines of code. Right now, I am specifically attempting to use a String’s contents to paint an image, and am wondering if it is possible. If it is it would save me at least a few hundred lines of individual variables for each image.

Pasting the whole program would more than likely prove counter productive due to the length, so I will merely demonstrate what I am attemtping.

What I am attempting to do:

ImageIcon ladder = new ImageIcon (getClass ().getResource ("ladder.png"));
floorContents [currentX] [currentY] = "ladder";

public void paint (Graphics g)
{
     if (floorContents [currentX] [currentY] != "none") // painting item where standing
     {
         floorContents[currentX][currentY].paintIcon (this, g, 0, 0);
     }
}

Essentially I am attempting to get the program to see
this line:

floorContents[currentX][currentY].paintIcon (this, g, 0, 0);

as this:

ladder.paintIcon (this, g, 0, 0);

If at all possible. This would save me from having to write in each image item seperately.

Answer 1

Put each image in a Map keyed by the string

imageMap.put("ladder", new ImageIcon (getClass ().getResource ("ladder.png")));

//...

imageMap.get(floorContents [currentX] [currentY]).paintIcon (this, g, 0, 0);

Of course, you should key to see if the map contains the key first, or if the value returned is null…

if (imageMap.containsKey(floorContents [currentX] [currentY]) {
    //....
}

of

ImageIcon image = imageMap.get(floorContents [currentX] [currentY]);
if (image != null) {
    //...
}

But that’s up to you