Question

I’m trying to get an image to load in a game that I am working on. I’m patterning it after a group game we built in class. In my panel class I load an image and draw it to the background, this works, it finds my image and draws it.

However, no matter how I load the image that I am putting in my spaceship class and draw it using an instance of spaceship, it gives me a null pointer exception. It never finds the image, I am guessing, however I put it in the same location in the source folder that the background image is successfully pulled from. Also, if I load the space image in my gamescreen class and draw it to the panel it works fine.

Code for the two classes is below. I have tried loading the image with a

spaceship = ImageIO.read(new File("Background.png"));

As well as:

Image img = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().createImage("spaceShip.png"); 

But get the same null pointer both ways. I’m lost and hope someone can help.

package temp;

import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
import java.awt.event.MouseListener;
import java.awt.image.BufferedImage;
import java.io.File;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;
import javax.swing.JFrame;
import javax.swing.JPanel;

public class GameScreen extends JFrame {

    //Create an instance of a spaceship object
    SpaceShip spaceship;

    //Create an instance of a missile object
    Missile missile;

    //Create an instance of a launcher object
    Launcher launcher;

    //create an array that holds missile objects
    ArrayList<Missile> missileArray = new ArrayList<Missile>();

    //Creates an array to hold spaceship objects
    ArrayList<SpaceShip> enemyArray = new ArrayList<SpaceShip>();

    int lives = 3;

    public GameScreen() {
        //sets up the panel and the parent frame

        //sets the default specs of the JFrame and adds the panel to it
        this.setSize(600, 700);
        this.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
        this.setVisible(true);

        //Creates a panel object and adds it to the main frame
        panel panel1 = new panel(launcher, enemyArray, missileArray);
        this.add(panel1);
    }
}

class panel extends JPanel {
    //creates a new launcher object
    Launcher launcher;

    //creates a spaceship object
    SpaceShip space;

    //creates an arraylist of spaceship objects
    static ArrayList<SpaceShip> ships;

    //creates an arraylist of missile objects
    ArrayList<Missile> missiles;

    //loads images to draw 
    Image backGround;

    public panel(Launcher la, ArrayList<SpaceShip> ss, ArrayList<Missile> mi) {
        try {
            launcher = la;
            ships = ss;
            missiles = mi;

            backGround = ImageIO.read(new File("Background.png"));
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
        BufferedImage x = new BufferedImage(600, 700, BufferedImage.TYPE_INT_RGB);
        Graphics g2 = x.getGraphics();

        g2.drawImage(backGround, 0, 0, this);

        g2.drawImage(space.img, 0, 0, this);

        System.out.println(ships.size());

        g.drawImage(x, 0, 0, this);
    }
}

SpaceShip.java

import java.awt.Image;
import java.awt.Toolkit;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.logging.Level;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import javax.imageio.ImageIO;

/**
 * @author WymoreJW
 */
class SpaceShip extends Character {

    Image img = Toolkit.getDefaultToolkit().createImage("spaceShip.png");

    public void SpaceShip() {

        this.health = 10;
        this.speed = 2;
    }
}

Stack Trace error

Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NullPointerException
    at missiledefense.panel.paintComponent(GameScreen.java:108)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1029)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paintChildren(JComponent.java:862)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1038)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paintChildren(JComponent.java:862)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1038)
    at javax.swing.JLayeredPane.paint(JLayeredPane.java:567)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paintChildren(JComponent.java:862)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paintToOffscreen(JComponent.java:5131)

    at    javax.swing.RepaintManager$PaintManager.paintDoubleBuffered
(RepaintManager.java:1479)

    at javax.swing.RepaintManager$PaintManager.paint(RepaintManager.java:1410)
    at javax.swing.RepaintManager.paint(RepaintManager.java:1224)
    at javax.swing.JComponent.paint(JComponent.java:1015)
    at java.awt.GraphicsCallback$PaintCallback.run(GraphicsCallback.java:21)
    at sun.awt.SunGraphicsCallback.runOneComponent(SunGraphicsCallback.java:60)
    at sun.awt.SunGraphicsCallback.runComponents(SunGraphicsCallback.java:97)
    at java.awt.Container.paint(Container.java:1780)
    at java.awt.Window.paint(Window.java:3375)
    at javax.swing.RepaintManager.paintDirtyRegions(RepaintManager.java:796)
    at javax.swing.RepaintManager.paintDirtyRegions(RepaintManager.java:713)
    at javax.swing.RepaintManager.seqPaintDirtyRegions(RepaintManager.java:693)
    at javax.swing.SystemEventQueueUtilities$ComponentWorkRequest.run
(SystemEventQueueUtilities.java:125)
    at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)
    at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters
(EventDispatchThread.java:269)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy
(EventDispatchThread.java:174)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161)
    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)

Answer 1

The biggest issue is that your comments don’t align with the code (semantically):

//creates a spaceship object
SpaceShip space;

This doesn’t create an instance. This creates a reference to an instance–but no instance. It’s null. You pass it to the (poorly-named) panel class constructor and act like there should be a value in it. But there isn’t.

The NPE, or at least one of them:

g2.drawImage(space.img, 0, 0, this); // *foom*

At least in the code provided, space is never initialized.

I’d also recommend not wedging all of this into a single file.