Key Listener and for loops

[Markos Sar]

Hello, I am currently working on a quiz game. The game has five different types of rounds and two different types of questions.
I am trying to implement a multiplayer mode where two players play with different sets of keys. I have assigned the keys to the players and i am trying to implement a key listener. I  figured i cant use for loops to get user input and set up the game (changing questions and rounds) like i would do conventionally because that sets up the order in which the players will answer (correct me if im wrong). I ended up writing rather messy code with a tone of "if" statements and im wondering if theres a better way to set this up.
This is my code for the key listener:

 questionPanel.addKeyListener(new KeyAdapter() {
            @Override
            public void keyPressed(KeyEvent e) {

                System.out.println("answer: "+e.getKeyChar());
                String answer=Character.toString(e.getKeyChar());
                if(game.getPlayer(0).getPlayerKeys().contains(answer) && !p1played){

                    if(game.isCorrectAnswer(game.getPlayer(0).getPlayerKeys().indexOf(answer)))
                        System.out.println("correct");
                    else
                        System.out.println("wrong! Correct answer is: "+game.getCurrentQuestion().getRightAnswer());

                    p1played=true;
                }
                if(game.getPlayers().size()==2 && game.getPlayer(1).getPlayerKeys().contains(answer) && !p2played){

                    if(game.isCorrectAnswer(game.getPlayer(1).getPlayerKeys().indexOf(answer)))
                        System.out.println("correct");
                    else
                        System.out.println("wrong! Correct answer is: "+game.getCurrentQuestion().getRightAnswer());

                    p2played=true;
                }
                if(game.getPlayers().size()==1){
                    if(p1played){
                        game.play(true);
                        roundInfo(game.getCurrentQuestion());
                        p1played=false;
                        p2played=false;
                        counter[0]++;
                    }
                }
                else if(game.getPlayers().size()==2){
                    if(p1played && p2played){
                        game.play(true);
                        roundInfo(game.getCurrentQuestion());
                        p1played=false;
                        p2played=false;
                        counter[0]++;
                    }
                }
                if(counter[0] ==6){
                    game.randomRound();
                    counter[0]=0;
                    System.out.println("Round changed to "+game.getCurrentRound());
                }

            }
        });


    }

[Paul Clapham]

You're right about the for loops, if you want to get input via keystrokes then the keystroke listener is the way to go.

And when a key is pressed, all you should do is to change the state of the game. That often involves updating the GUI and it often involves changing internal variables of the game which keep track of things.

So changing the GUI would include the things you're doing right now using System.out (which can't be seen in normal Swing applications). And the internal variables are things like "game" and "p1played". (Although for me, I don't understand why "game" keeps track of a lot of things relevant to the game but it doesn't keep track of whether Player 1 has played.)

Anyway, yeah, you're on the right track. But normally you'd write some methods to do things, rather than having the long messy list of if-statements. For example: in several places you need to know whether there are two players. So perhaps the "game" object could tell you that via a "boolean hasTwoPlayers()" method. And then you've got duplicated code like "game.getPlayer(x).getPlayerKeys().contains(answer)" which could also be encapsulated in a "game" method like "boolean game.isCorrectAnswer(x, answer)". Basically the "game" object should be responsible for doing a lot of the things which you are doing in the code you posted there.