Whats the easiest/simplest way to draw a board with images on it?

Question

Im doing a project for school and im familiar with gui�s but I never done any work on drawing a board (10 x 10) and being able to place a jpg in each box. I have an overall idea of what im thinking about doing. Which is of course using a multidimensional array, and drawing the board on a Jpanel. From my understanding, the gui is just for looks the real action is going on whenever the user clicks on a square and getting the x,y coordinates, and placing or getting that image�s name/number from the array based on the coordinates right? The only part im not so sure about is the drawing of the board and placing jpgs on it based on the users clicks. Any sugguestions to help me get started?

Answer 1

hey db,
thanks for your reply, out of curiousity will this
slow down the process of displaying the pictures
since i will be using MediaTracker(or is there a
better way of displaying gif/jpg?)? My favorite way is to add a JLabel to the panel, create an ImageIcon from the jpg and then call setIcon on the Jlabel passing it the ImageIcon. ImageIcon uses its own MediaTracker so you don't need to mess with one.
i was also hinted
to do this from a friend which was to create 1 X by X
pixel panel first then have a parent panel that
contains 100 of them (10x10) but wasnt sure since i
only knew 1 way of doing it which was getting the xy
coordinates. since this project will allow the user
to move pieces sorta like chess where each piece has
the ability to move a certain # of spaces and based
on their characteristics they can either win or get
"kill", i wasnt sure as to which was the best way of
doing this.
btw you said when creating an ImagePanel i wouldnt
have to calculate where the user clicked on, for
example if the user clicks on the 2nd row 1st box
(which is 0,1 in my array) will be the actual
ImagePanel be returned so i can either remove the
image and place it elsewhere without having to get
the xy coordinates or do i have the concept wrong?My thought was that clicking on a particular panel would cause it to become the "active panel" which you could then manipulate as you wish.
>
thanks again db!The link camickr provided is also a good solution
Cheers
DB