Why Forge Swing GUI is currently hold with duct tape

[Snacko]

Swing is single threaded, this means every creation / manipulation of Swing objects has to be done on the even dispatch thread.
This has a heavy implication that you dont bog down the even dispatch thread with heavy computation or the GUI wont update. The exact example of this done wrong is the progress bar which doesn't update if you move it around, but just smears.

Currently as a duct tape fix the whole Forge code runs on the even dispatch queue!
To disable the tape fix you have to comment the code in Gui_NewGame.java

Code: Select all

SwingUtilities.invokeLater(new Runnable() {
                public void run() {
                    AllZone.setComputer(new ComputerAI_Input(new ComputerAI_General()));
                    new Gui_NewGame();
                }
            });

And only leave the two lines inside or run. For a better effect you can enable one of Substance skins which will enable the checking of proper Swing usage. If you're brave enough, you now should see couple hundred exceptions and Forge GUI might not work at all at some points

The good course of action would be to fix this at some point. I'm just leaving it here for anyone wanting to do any GUI work on Forge.

You can read more here :
basically you need to use invokeLater or SwingWorker
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-0 ... tml?page=1

[friarsol]

The good course of action would be to fix this at some point. I'm just leaving it here for anyone wanting to do any GUI work on Forge.

Thanks for the Notes Snacko, but I slightly disagree. The good course of action is to nuke it all and start from scratch. Our UI needs a major makeover.

[Braids]

if we could implement more of the UI in terms of (a list of?) decisions you or the AI can make at this moment and the effects of each of these decisions, this would greatly help minimax.

do we need a separate View layer? (as in Model View Controller)

[Braids]

i'm rewriting some of the UI startup code. thanks for the pointer, Snacko. i should be able to avoid the pitfall you describe during the execution of my new code. well, it's a start. better than nothing.

@Snacko, could you review my code once i've committed it? if i don't hear from you, i'll try to PM you after the commit.

[Snacko]

Pm me after commit as I don't follow commits very closely.

[cuhnkedrik]

Minimax could be considerably improved if the user interface provided more information about the choices you or the AI had right now and the outcomes of those choices.

Is a View layer really necessary?