Bay 12 Games Forum

To anyone posting large amounts of code:
Please consider using something like pastebin.com or gist.github.com (gist can handle multiple files!), it'll keep your posts cleaner and make the code easier to read.

That managed to work perfectly.  Unfortunately my new problem is that the computer I have to present it on is running Java 6, because my teacher apparently had trouble with a piece of software when it updated to 7.  So to get it to run in six do I only have to use the JDK for six?  And if so which would I use?  The Java archive here have everything from 6 to 6u45.  What are the differences between all of these?

Oh, that's one I've actually never directly dealt with. A quick google finds this StackOverflow post about netbeans (which I've never used). If you're using Eclipse, it's under project properties somewhere (try Java Build Path and Java Compiler; "generated .class files compatibility" in the latter looks promising); I don't have a new version handy on this machine. If you're building manually with javac, the "-target" option looks like what you need.

So, it looks like JDK 7 can build for JRE 6, and you're almost certainly not using any 7-only libraries, so that should be fine. Ideally, test first. If you really want to be sure, you can always uninstall 7 and just use 6 (or try running it on some other computer that only has 6).

As for code review, the first big thing I'd mention is names. Give your variables descriptive names! Unless you're using Notepad(*), your code editor/IDE should autocomplete them, so there's no excuse to not use full words for your variable names. This is doubly important for class and method names. And always capitalize your class names! It's such a firmly entrenched convention, it's disorienting when it is broken.

Second important thing, always declare your variables at the innermost scope possible. Is that string set at the start of each iteration of your loop and never needed outside of it? Declare it inside the loop! If you're careful you can even reuse the same name in different places (with different types!).

I'll get some more detailed stuff put together tomorrow: It's 3:30am here now. Feel free to put up your most recent code.

(*)And if you are using Notepad, stop. Now. Seriously. Go download Notepad++, it's got autocomplete and syntax highlighting and tabbed editing.

For my English project on Hamlet I am making a game where you are presented with some story information and then make a choice.  Instead of putting everything into the code itself I decided to have it read from a text file.  My problem is that I am currently getting a NullPointerException.  Normally I would try to fix this myself, but I'm getting it in the part of the code that my Comp Sci teacher gave us specifically to allow us to do stuff without learning IO, even thou he did encourage us to try. 
--- snip ---
The place where I am getting the error is Line 52 in the IO code, where it says "try{return in.nextLine();}"

That IO code is terrible...

The problem is a cascade of your file path not being valid: "Libraries\Documents\info" is interpreted as relative path; you probably need the absolute path (which should start with "C:\").

The NPE is because of this
  try{in = new Scanner(new FileInputStream(name));}
  catch(java.io.FileNotFoundException e){}

That silently swallows the vastly more informative FileNotFoundException and leaves in unassigned (and therefore null).

I'm guessing you haven't gotten to exception handling yet either, or that constructor should have throws FileNotFoundException on it so your code can catch the exception.

Also, style tip/nitpick: class names should start with a capital letter.

EDIT: i fail bbcode...

Hear her out!

Bandwagon! Dungeons!

I've recently been playing around with creating and joining threads in static initialization/deinitialization (C++). That is, pre-main and post-main. Short version: don't do it. Even if it works in one case, it will probably fail randomly somewhere down the line, and it's probably not portable.

Yeah this was my gut reaction:

don't do it.

Why would do that anyway? I'm genuinely curious as to what legitimate use it could have.

Pardon my C++ ignorance, but isn't pretty much anything "pre-main/post-main" non-portable?

Quote from: Blaze on March 23, 2014, 11:32:36 pm

Elegance and Presence for new hats.

Quote from: SolarShado on March 19, 2014, 10:28:28 pm

* SolarShado crosses fingers hoping for a devArt link

http://real-fiduciose.deviantart.com/art/The-conductor-70376021

Yay!
Was hoping for more robots in the same style, but still some cool stuff.

WALLPAPERS FOR THE WALLPAPER... uh... FOLDER!