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SPower
SPower presents ...

2012/5/7

Multi Threading demo

This is a demo to show you mutlti threading. Multi threading is something you can really use in your own scenarios, you will learn what it is in the course.

You can download the course here:
http://www.2shared.com/document/huQ-i6YH/Multi_threading_course.html
You'll learn the basiscs of multi threading, I will bring out some more courses about it with some more advanced things.

The bee and the alligator are controlled by another thread, so you can't control them by the run, stop or act button.

If you've got questions, leave a comment. Feel free to do so!

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Tags: demo with-source course lesson multi-threading

This scenario is a member of: Greenfoot courses

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SPowerSPower

2012/5/8

@martijn13039 Maybe I will make a course about making a menu, but I first want to focus on school, and I first want to make a lesson about real object oriented programming (something most programmers don't do, unfortunately)
martijn13039martijn13039

2012/5/8

thats no big deal, it was only some advice (because not many people know how)
SPowerSPower

2012/5/8

Ok, but object oriented programming is more important (because Java is a object oriented language), and most people don't know how to do it right...
davmacdavmac

2012/5/8

SPower, there's nothing actually wrong with the material you've written (in fact it's nicely written) but: multi-threading is way, way harder than you might think. For simple examples, it's fine, but for anything more complex there are subtle issues that you need to be aware of. Although I can't see the source code for your scenario, I know it has a multi-threading bug: that is, it does something in a way that isn't thread-safe. Specifically, you shouldn't call Greenfoot API methods (particularly movement / collision checking) from another thread - because the Greenfoot API just isn't thread-safe. Now, it might [i]seem[/i] to work - but, if you run the scenario for a long time, or if you run it another computer, you might see an inexplicable failure which is due to internal data structures being corrupted, because they were accessed from two threads at the same time. Such problems are more common than you might think. In short, to save yourself from a world of pain with multi-threading, don't do it. If you want to see how complicated the code is to do correct multi-threading while using the Greenfoot API, you can have a look at one of my own scenarios: http://www.greenfoot.org/scenarios/1963
SPowerSPower

2012/5/8

Thanks for the feedback, davmac! I'll learn from your scenario.
A new version of this scenario was uploaded on Tue Jun 05 14:18:28 UTC 2012 Posted the source code as is: I didn't change it. And for the people who are interested: I'm working on a course about creating a menu
A new version of this scenario was uploaded on Tue Jun 05 14:20:32 UTC 2012 Removed useless code in 2 classes: forgot to do :)
tylerstylers

2012/6/14

it dont move unless you scroll the screen a bit then it stops.
Game/maniacGame/maniac

2013/9/9

Will having multiple threads increase the performance of a game with lots of actors?
SPowerSPower

2013/9/10

Well, your computer will still need to run those Actors' act methods, it just does it simultaniousl. So yes, it could help, but only if those act methods take a noticable time to run. Also, as davmac already pointed out, Greenfoot isn't thread safe: to do it completely safe you'll have to look at his scenario: http://www.greenfoot.org/scenarios/1963 So if you need the 'performance boost', I suggest you also check out his scenario and use it!

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