Creating graphics for a simple board game in Java

Question

I have created a board game in Java that is not different in principle from checkers. It works fine in the console but now I'm trying to create graphics. I have a Piece class, a Tile class that checks if it is empty or occupied by a white or a black checkers piece, a Grid class that keeps track of the tiles in a matrix, and a Game class.

Currently, the game can be played in the Grid class; when we run the Grid class, the user specifies the size of the board in the console and then plays the game by giving the x and y coordinates of the tile that the user wishes to select. What I would like to change is to run the game in the Game class, which is an extension of JPanel and implements MouseListener (code given below). The game board will be a fixed size (I'll begin with 5x5) and I have drawn a picture of a grid which should be in the background of the game. There will be an instance variable (Grid g = new Grid(5,5)). I have also drawn pictures of the different "checkers" pieces which will be used, they should be distributed in the foreground on specific tiles. What I want to happen is that when the user clicks a tile, the checkers pieces move. Ideally, I would do this so that the program sees the coordinates of the place that the mouse clicks (say that the JPanel is 500x500 pixels and the user clicks the pixel with the coordinate (0,500), then we check if (0,500) belongs to some tile, if it doesn't then nothing happens, if it does belong to a tile on the Grid g then g.play(something,something)).

            import java.awt.Color;
            import java.awt.FlowLayout;
            import java.awt.Graphics;
            import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
            import java.awt.event.MouseListener;
            import javax.swing.JFrame;
            import javax.swing.JLabel;
            import java.util.*;
            import java.awt.*;
            import java.awt.event.*;
            import java.awt.FlowLayout;
            import java.awt.event.MouseEvent;
            import java.awt.event.MouseListener;
            import javax.swing.*;

            public class Game extends JPanel implements MouseListener {

                private Grid g = new Grid(5,5);

                public Game() {
                    JFrame frame = new JFrame("Boardgame");
                    frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
                    frame.setLayout(new FlowLayout());

                    frame.setLayout(new FlowLayout());
                    frame.setPreferredSize(new Dimension(500,500));
                    frame.pack();
                    frame.setVisible(true);
                    frame.addMouseListener(this);

                }
                public void mouseClicked(MouseEvent e) {
                        //here we check if the user clicked on a tile, 
    if that happens then we get the x and y-coordinates of the tile and then g.play(x,y)
                }

                public void mouseEntered(MouseEvent e) {
// we are not really interested in this method or the following 
mouse methods but they are necessary for the mouselistener

                }

                public void mouseExited(MouseEvent e) {

            }

            public void mousePressed(MouseEvent e) {

            }

            public void mouseReleased(MouseEvent e) {

            }

            public static void main(String args[]) {
                new Game();
            }
        }

So in essence, what I would like to do is:

i) Have a background picture (this is easy right?) [update: I have done this by means of using a JLabel, if there is any better way to do it please tell me].

ii) Fix the MouseListener so that the pieces move when a tile is clicked. The only input I require is which tile is to be moved, we don't need to know which piece is supposed to go there.

Any help would be really appreciated and please ask if I can clarify something. This is not for school or anything, just a private project.

Creating graphics for a simple board game in Java

Answers (1)

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