Application#

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The application class is the heart of a GameKit program. You must extend this class to do anything useful with the engine. An example is shown below:

import dev.gamekit.core.Application;

public class MyGame extends Application {
  public MyGame() {
    super("My Game");
  }
}

It runs a fixed-step game update loop which protects against lag spikes. It also manages scenes, schedules animations and timeouts and provides methods to manage the running instance.

Application splits its workload into four (4) threads to handle the game update loop, rendering, audio and physics updates. This multithreaded setup improves performance on multicore processors dramatically, since each thread is independent of each other.

Configuration#

The simplest way to configure an application instance is providing a window title string.

Application app = new Application("Title Goes Here") { }

Since Application is an abstract class, we need to extend it for a concrete implementation or use anonymous subclass instantiation as shown above

An application instance can also accept a Settings object which allows you to specify more settings.

Application game = new Application(
  new Settings(
    "Demo 4 - Declarative UI",  // Window title string
    Resolution.HD,              // Resolution (VGA, SVGA, XGA, HD, WXGA, FULL_HD, NATIVE)
    WindowMode.WINDOWED,        // Window mode (WINDOWED, BORDERLESS, FULLSCREEN)
    Antialiasing.ON,            // Antialiasing (ON, OFF, DEFAULT)
    TextAntialiasing.ON,        // UI text antialiasing (ON, OFF, DEFAULT)
    AlphaInterpolation.SPEED,   // Image alpha interpolation (SPEED, QUALITY, DEFAULT)
    ImageInterpolation.NEAREST, // Image pixel interpolation (NEAREST, BILINEAR, BICUBIC, DEFAULT)
    RenderingStrategy.SPEED,    // Overall rendering priority (SPEED, QUALITY, DEFAULT)
    Dithering.OFF               // Dithering (ON, OFF, DEFAULT)
  )
) { };

Public Methods#

Method	Description
loadScene	Loads a new scene at the end of the current frame
scheduleTask	+1 Schedules a task to run immediately after the current frame +2 Schedules a task to run after some time has elapsed
run	Starts the game loop of an application instance
quit	Quits the running application instance

Static Methods#

Method	Description
getInstance	Returns the running application instance

Next Steps#

You're now familiar with the Application class. Next, we'll look at entities & scenes which are building blocks for more complex games.