Help with running multiple threads

Question

I'm new to programming with threads. I want to know how to run
multiple threads at the same time. Particularly for making games
in Java which I'm also begining to learn. For running multiple
threads at the same time, do you have to put two run() methods
in the source? If not then how do you make two threads or more
run at the same time?
Thanks for helping.

Answer 1

For running multiple
threads at the same time, do you have to put two run()
methods
in the source? Hi there,
Each thread is presumably performing a task. You may be performing the same task multiple times or be performing different tasks at once. Either way, each task would typically be contained within the run() method of a class. This class would either be a subclass of java.lang.Thread (extends Thread) or would be an implementation of java.lang.Runnable (implements Runnable). In either case, you would define a method with signature (public void run()...). The difference comes into play when you wish to actually perform one of these tasks. With a subclass of Thread, you would simply perform:
new MyTask().start();
With an implementation of Runnable, you would do this:
new Thread(new MyTask()).start();
This assumes you don't need to monitor the threads, won't be sending any messages to your tasks or any such thing. If that were the case, you would need to tuck away those returns to new MyTask() for later access.
In order to launch two threads simultaneously, you would have something along the lines of:
new MyTask().start();
new MyOtherTask().start();
Now it is perfectly possible that MyTask() would complete before MyOtherTask() managed to start in which case it wouldn't appear as if you had actually had multiple threads running, but for non-trivial tasks, the two will likely overlap. And of course, in a game, these tasks would likely be launched in response to user input, which means that you wouldn't have any control over when or in what order they executed.
Anyhow, it's as simple as that. You should also consider following the Java Threading trail which shows a simple example of using multiple threads. You can find it at:
http://java.sun.com/docs/books/tutorial/essential/threads/index.html
Regards,
Lynn