Possible to start a SurfaceView with a Game Thread anytime other than at startup of the program?

Question

Hello everyone,

I've read several example programs and tutorials to try and solve my problem but they all seem to go the same way. I've used a couple Activities and xml documents to create a menu that loads when my game starts. When the user clicks the "Start The Game" button, it loads a new Activity that sets the view with my game thread and all of the game properties. I know this activity works because I've run it alone as its own project, but every way I've tried to start it after the Menu, I get a nullPointerException and it force closes. I read the SurfaceViewOverlay tutorial and attempted to use that implementation, but I'm using a SurfaceView, not a GLSurfaceView. I'm debating rewriting my entire program to use OpenGL but I figured I would see if anyone else knows what I'm doing wrong here. If you need the code snippets I can paste some here, but it's not really the specific code that's wrong, I think it's the way I'm using(abusing) the language...

Thanks for any help, Aaron

Answer 1

I discovered my problem quite some time ago, but figured I would come back and give an answer to anyone else having my problem. When using a SurfaceView it must be part of the activity that created it and be in some sort of FrameLayout in the xml for that activity.

For example:

    <com.example.MySurfaceView
    android:id="@+id/mySurfaceView"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    />

You can add any other layout elements you would like, but this is required to create the SurfaceView. I hope this helps anyone else who had my problem, for any further questions just ask and I'll be sure to elaborate if necessary.