Anansi: Resources

Before we can create the sprites we need to load the images for them. The code is straightforward:

Image backgroundImage;
Image cloudImages[];
Image playerShipImage;
Image playerBulletImage;
Image playerMissileImage;
Image enemyImage;
...
private void loadResources() {
 
 // background
 // --------------------------------
 backgroundImage = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/maps/canyon.jpg").toExternalForm());
 
 // player ship
 // --------------------------------
 playerShipImage = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/vehicles/anansi.png").toExternalForm());
 
 // clouds
 // --------------------------------
 cloudImages = new Image[4];
 cloudImages[0] = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/environment/cloud-01.png").toExternalForm());
 cloudImages[1] = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/environment/cloud-02.png").toExternalForm());
 cloudImages[2] = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/environment/cloud-03.png").toExternalForm());
 cloudImages[3] = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/environment/cloud-04.png").toExternalForm());
 
 // bullets
 playerBulletImage = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/bullets/bullet_01.png").toExternalForm());
  
 // enemy ship: tormentor
 enemyImage = new Image( getClass().getResource( "assets/vehicles/tormentor.png").toExternalForm());
}

There isn't much to add to this, it's simple. Since everything is very similar one could create an identifier (eg enum) for each image type and put it into a map with the filename as value, iterate the map and load the resources that way. But we'll leave that for later when we create multiple levels and need a resource manager.

As you may already suggest, this method would also load other resources like e. g. sound files.