Question

Now I need to write a 8-puzzle game, which looks [like this]

The instructor asked us to write three different classes, which are Piece.java, EightPuzzle.java, and EightPuzzlePanel.java.
As you can see,
Piece.java represents each individual piece like “1”, “2” in this eight puzzle board;
EightPuzzle.java represents the the game board to hold these 9 pieces/buttons.
EightPuzzlePanel.java is the GUI stuff.

So my question is, since we need to create a Piece[][] piece = new Piece[][], a 2D array, and we also need to arrange these piece on the board. I thought I could create 9 JButtons and put the 2D array in link with the 9 JButtons (or there have a better way to sort the 2D-array), but I don’t know how to do that.

Also the buttons need to be controlled by both mouse and keyboard. This is another challenge for me.

Answer 1

Since this is homework I will not go into much detail, but this is how I would go about it:

1. Make Piece extends the JButton class. The Piece object takes the text to display and also the location of the image you would like it to render. You should be able to find plenty of examples online on how to add an image to a JButton.
2. Make EightPuzzle extend the JPanel class and also use the Grid Layout to render the Pieces neatly in a grid. This class takes on a 2D array of Piece objects which it will then render.
3. Make EightPuzzlePanel also extend the JPanel class. This class takes in another JPanel (EightPuzzle) and appends any other buttons you might need.
4. Finally create a Main class which extends JFrame and then I append the EightPuzzlePanel to it (which should in turn contain the other panel with the other buttons).