Smoother controls

Question

I am trying to move my background left if the user hits the right key. and right if the user hits the left key, so that it will look like the player is moving.

The problem is that whenever I hold the right key, there is a pause of 1 second, then the background moves to the left. I want to make it smoother so that if the user holds the right key, the background moves left immediately.

Note that the background is a 2d int array with just 2's in it, and in Paint I am drawing a green rectangle, so the background is green.

main.java

.....
public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e){
   int keys = e.getKeyCode();

    if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT)
    {
        level_class.hitRIGHT();  //move camera left
    }
    else if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_LEFT)
    {
        level_class.hitLEFT();  //move camera right
    }
    }/*** end of key pressed method ***/


    /*** KEY RELEASED ***/
    public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e)
    {
        int keys = e.getKeyCode();

            if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT)
            {

            }
            else if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_LEFT)
            {

            }
    }/*** end of key pressed method ***/

Level class:

public class levels {
//note my array is alot bigger than this. i just made a small one here
    private int map01[][] = { { 2, 2, 2 },
                            { 2, 2, 2} };

    int camera_pos_x = 0;       
    int camera_pos_y = 0;   
    int camera_speed = 5;   //camera speed

    .....
    /*** move camera left ***/
public void hitRIGHT()
{
    camera_pos_x += camera_speed;
}
public void hitLEFT()
{
    camera_pos_x -= camera_speed;
}

    public void paint(Graphics g) {
        for (int y = 0; y < map01.length; y++) // rows
        {
            for (int x = 0; x < map01[y].length; x++) // cols
            {
                if (map01[y][x] == 0)
                {
                    g.setColor(Color.green);
                    g.fillRect(x * tile_size - camera_pos_x, y * tile_size -camera_pos_y, tile_size, tile_size);
                }
            }
        }// end of main for loop
    }// end of paint method
}

Answer 1

Yes, as ScrambledRK said, you should be settting flags. You should create 2 boolean variables:

Boolean left_key_down = false;
Boolean right_key_down = false;

and set them to appropriate values in the event listeners:

public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) {
   int keys = e.getKeyCode();
   if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT)
   {
      right_key_down = true;
   }
   else if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_LEFT)
   {
      left_key_down = true;
   }
}
public void keyReleased(KeyEvent e)
{
   int keys = e.getKeyCode();
   if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT)
   {
      right_key_down = false;
   }
   else if(keys == KeyEvent.VK_LEFT)
   {
      left_key_down = false;
   }
}

Then, do your motion in your main update loop based on those flags.

// main loop blah blah
if( left_key_down ) hitRIGHT();
if( right_key_down ) hitLEFT();

That should result in smooth motion.

Answer 2

you are prob. better of checking the key-pressed status every frame and using the key-listener to just flag the key as pressed (using a map/array with the keycode as key).

I'm not familiar with java, but flash has the same issue. The reason might be related to the way a frame is split up internally and the fps your app runs in similar to the AS2/AS3 VM