Am I using libGDX Asset Manager correctly?

Question

My understanding is that you initialize the AssetManager as a non-static object in your main class and load the sprites you need...

    manager = new AssetManager();
    manager.load("sprite_sheet.txt", TextureAtlas.class);
    manager.finishLoading();

I then modified my abstract State class by adding AssetManager to the constructor...

 State(GameStateManager gsm, AssetManager manager) {
    this.gsm = gsm;
    this.manager = manager;

Now say I have 5 blocks in my sprite sheet called block0, block1... block5 would it be appropriate to create a BlockTextures class like this?

private static TextureAtlas textureAtlas;

public BlockTextures(AssetManager manager) {
    textureAtlas = manager.get("sprite_sheet.txt", TextureAtlas.class);
}

public static AtlasRegion get(int id) {
    return textureAtlas.findRegion("block" + id);
}

public static void dispose() {
    textureAtlas.dispose();
}

Where I call BlockTextures.dispose() in my Game.dispose() method?

public void dispose() {
    BlockTextures.dispose();
}

While this code seems to work fine I feel like I am not using AssetManager correctly.

Answer 1

While you certainly can do what you're doing I would suggest that you pass your AssetManager around yo the classes that need to load resources instead. So instead of doing BlockTextures.get(id); where you need to use the texture you should instead pass the AssetManager and do

// Store this variable 
TextureAtlas atlas = manager.get(name, TextureAtlas.class);

//Use the Atlas later as you would normally
atlas.whatever();

It is also crucial that you don't dispose individual assets using their dispose method. Instead dispose of the AssetManager or use the unload method of the AssetManager to unload a specific resource.

You can read more on AssetManager on the wiki.