android zoomable and scrollable board game

Question

I'm developing a Android board game and have a question regarding creating a board that is zoomable and scrollable. The board contains a static background, characters (players) and the actual "level" which is drawn using tiles.

My solutions is to have a collection of elements (tiles, figures, all game elements - all have x,y coordinates and width + height), a camera and a renderer that draws the collection according to cameraX,cameraY, cameraWidth and cameraHeight. So if a user would scroll to the right, the camera would just set the cameraX appropriately - and the surface is scrollable. And if a user would zoom in/out the renderer would just scale every element image appropriately.

Example code for the renderer with scrollable surface and zoom in/out

    protected function draw(Canvas c){
      Collection elements = collection.getElements(cameraX,cameraY,cameraWidth,cameraHeight);
      if(elements.size() > 0) {
         for(int i = 0; i < elements.size(); i++) {
              elements.get(i).drawElement(c);
         }
      }
    }
    .
    .
    .
    // element class drawElement function
    protected drawElement function(Canvas c) {
        if(this.image != null) {            
          int w = this.width;
          int h = this.height;
          if(this.zoomFactor < 1) {
             w*=this.zoomFactor;
             h*=this.zoomFactor;
          }
          c.drawBitmap(this.image,this.x,this.y,w,h);
        }
    }

• Is this the best solutions?
• Could it be achived somehow else?
• Could scrolling be achived using a ScrollView?

I dont wanna use any engine, because this is for a school project.

Answer 1

Good logic but use Matricies with scale transformations to implement zoom, do not try and calculate it everywhere yourself.

That way you could write the following code:

canvas.save();
canvas.setMatrix(myMapMatrix);

// TODO write the rest of the drawing code here using map co-ordinates

canvas.restore();

Where myMapMatrix is the matrix that lets you go from the screen viewport to the board game map. And if you get the inverse matrix then you can transform a map co-ordinate into a screen co-ordinate. I know because this is the way that I am currently doing it in my game.

I will leave how to create the Matrix as an exercise for you but let me give you a hint.