Question

I’m implementing a board game for a course I’m taking. There are 5 “racks” (ImageViews), 1 for each of 5 players. The way I wish to show the current player is to have their rack “highlighted” (achieved through setting the alpha value). Now, this could be done successfully by just calling the setAlpha method, but it’s a little jarring to go straight from one to the other, so i’d like to use an alpha animation. My issue is that, when the current player switches, I want to dim the highlighted rack, and highlight the next rack. It does this fine with those two racks, but in addition, every OTHER rack does a “dim”, in that it immediately brightens and slowly dims back down. Makes the game look rather bizarre. So the two that I want to change are changing correctly, but all the others should just stay dim. I have the following code set up for it:

dim.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<alpha
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:fromAlpha="0.75"
    android:toAlpha="0.5"
    android:duration="1000"/>

highlight.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<alpha
    xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:fromAlpha="0.5"
    android:toAlpha="0.75"
    android:duration="1000"/>

dim and highlight methods:

dim = AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(gui, R.anim.dim); dim.setFillAfter(true);
highlight = AnimationUtils.loadAnimation(gui, R.anim.highlight); highlight.setFillAfter(true);

public Runnable dim(final Player player) {
    return new Runnable() {
          public void run () {
              dim.reset();
              player.getRack().clearAnimation();
              player.getRack().startAnimation(dim);
              //player.getRack().setAlpha(128);
              continuation();
          }
        };
}

public Runnable highlight(final Player player) {
    return new Runnable() {
          public void run () {
              highlight.reset();
              player.getRack().clearAnimation();
              player.getRack().startAnimation(highlight);
              //player.getRack().setAlpha(192);
              continuation();
          }
        };
}

The places it’s called (denoted by asterisks):

public void setup() {
    int starting = (int)(Math.random()*players.size());
    curPlayer = players.get(starting);
    observer.execute(
    *** observer.dim(players.get(0)),
    *** observer.dim(players.get(1)),
    *** observer.dim(players.get(2)),
    *** observer.dim(players.get(3)),
    *** observer.dim(players.get(4)),
    *** observer.highlight(curPlayer)
    );
}

public void draw() {
    if(deck.isEmpty()) {
        //Game over
        return;
    }
    Question q = deck.pop();
    String answer = q.answer(curPlayer);
    answers.add(answer);
    Player oldPlayer = curPlayer;
    curPlayer = players.get((curPlayer.getPlayerNum() + 1)%players.size());
    observer.execute(
        observer.ask(q.getQuestionText()),
        observer.say(answer),
    *** observer.dim(oldPlayer),
    *** observer.highlight(curPlayer)
    );
}

Any ideas??? I’m hitting a wall with this and can’t seem to find an answer anywhere. Sorry for the large amount of code!

Answer 1

I’m not familiar with the observer classes you’re using. Try 2 things:

1) Re-load your animations on each dim/highlight call.
2) Try without observer in draw (explicitly call startAnimation).

I’m assuming the observer class is going what it appears to be doing, and #2 won’t make a difference, but its something to try. If you’re using observer to allow those operations to be called in the UI thread, create/use a Handler.