Use a "game loop" to drive the animation. Since this looks to be possibly a Swing or AWT GUI, then your best bet is to use a Swing Timer -- please check out the tutorial. The gist is that within the Timer's ActionListener you increment the position of the snake, changing its direction depending on the state of your key press.
I would use an enum to indicate Direction {UP, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT}:
public enum Direction {
UP,
DOWN,
LEFT,
RIGHT
}
AND then a Map<Direction, Boolean> to indicate which direction to head:
private Map<Direction, Boolean> dirMap = new EnumMap<>(Direction.class);
Elsewhere you would initialize the Map to hold false in all values:
// initialize the map to all false
for (Direction dir : Direction.values()) {
dirMap.put(dir, false);
}
Then change the state of the items in the Map within your code for listening to key presses and releases -- call map.put(Direction.UP, true) for instance when the up key is pressed, and likewise call map.put(Direction.UP, false) when it has been released, same for the other keys. Note that if yours is a Swing application, I'd use Key Bindings and not a KeyListener to do this. In the listener, I'd then call repaint() on the GUI.
Within the Swing Timer, iterate through the Map, setting the direction based on the state of the Map.
class fields:
private int spriteX = 0; // location of sprite
private int spriteY = 0;
private int directionX = 0; // direction sprite is heading
private int directionY = 0;
Within the ActionListener
// within the Swing Timer's ActionListener
if (dirMap.get(Direction.UP)) {
directionY -= 1;
}
if (dirMap.get(Direction.DOWN)) {
directionY += 1;
}
if (dirMap.get(Direction.RIGHT)) {
directionX += 1;
}
if (dirMap.get(Direction.LEFT)) {
directionY -= 1;
}
// here multiply directionX and directionY by some scale factor and use to place new snake head
// then call repaint();
For example (not a snake but a ball -- I'll leave the Snake to you)
import java.awt.Color;
import java.awt.Dimension;
import java.awt.Graphics;
import java.awt.Graphics2D;
import java.awt.RenderingHints;
import java.awt.event.ActionEvent;
import java.awt.event.ActionListener;
import java.awt.event.KeyEvent;
import java.util.EnumMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Map.Entry;
import javax.swing.*;
@SuppressWarnings("serial")
public class DirTest extends JPanel {
private static final int PREF_W = 800;
private static final int PREF_H = PREF_W;
private static final int TIMER_DELAY = 40;
private static final Color SPRITE_COLOR = Color.RED;
private static final int SPRITE_W = 20;
private static final Color BG = Color.BLACK;
public static final int SCALE = 1;
private Map<Direction, Boolean> dirMap = new EnumMap<>(Direction.class);
private int spriteX = 0;
private int spriteY = 0;
private int directionX = 0;
private int directionY = 0;
private Timer gameLoopTimer = new Timer(TIMER_DELAY, new TimerListener());
public DirTest() {
setKeyBindings();
setBackground(BG);
// initialize map to all 0;
for (Direction dir : Direction.values()) {
dirMap.put(dir, false);
}
gameLoopTimer.start();
}
private void setKeyBindings() {
int condition = WHEN_IN_FOCUSED_WINDOW; // bind to keys if component in active window
InputMap inputMap = getInputMap(condition);
ActionMap actionMap = getActionMap();
setKeyBinding(inputMap, actionMap, KeyEvent.VK_UP, Direction.UP);
setKeyBinding(inputMap, actionMap, KeyEvent.VK_DOWN, Direction.DOWN);
setKeyBinding(inputMap, actionMap, KeyEvent.VK_LEFT, Direction.LEFT);
setKeyBinding(inputMap, actionMap, KeyEvent.VK_RIGHT, Direction.RIGHT);
}
private void setKeyBinding(InputMap inputMap, ActionMap actionMap, int keyCode, Direction dir) {
KeyStroke press = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(keyCode, 0, false);
KeyStroke released = KeyStroke.getKeyStroke(keyCode, 0, true);
Action pressAction = new PressedAction(dir, true);
Action releasedAction = new PressedAction(dir, false);
inputMap.put(press, press.toString());
inputMap.put(released, released.toString());
actionMap.put(press.toString(), pressAction);
actionMap.put(released.toString(), releasedAction);
}
@Override
protected void paintComponent(Graphics g) {
super.paintComponent(g);
Graphics2D g2 = (Graphics2D) g;
g2.setRenderingHint(RenderingHints.KEY_ANTIALIASING, RenderingHints.VALUE_ANTIALIAS_ON);
g2.setColor(SPRITE_COLOR);
g2.fillOval(spriteX, spriteY, SPRITE_W, SPRITE_W);
}
@Override
public Dimension getPreferredSize() {
if (isPreferredSizeSet()) {
return super.getPreferredSize();
}
return new Dimension(PREF_W, PREF_H);
}
private class PressedAction extends AbstractAction {
private boolean pressed;
private Direction dir;
public PressedAction(Direction dir, boolean pressed) {
this.dir = dir;
this.pressed = pressed;
}
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
dirMap.put(dir, pressed);
}
}
private class TimerListener implements ActionListener {
@Override
public void actionPerformed(ActionEvent e) {
for (Entry<Direction, Boolean> entry : dirMap.entrySet()) {
if (entry.getValue()) {
directionX += entry.getKey().getX();
directionY += entry.getKey().getY();
}
}
spriteX += SCALE * directionX;
spriteY += SCALE * directionY;
repaint();
}
}
private static void createAndShowGui() {
JFrame frame = new JFrame("DirTest");
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(JFrame.EXIT_ON_CLOSE);
frame.getContentPane().add(new DirTest());
frame.pack();
frame.setLocationRelativeTo(null);
frame.setVisible(true);
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
SwingUtilities.invokeLater(() -> createAndShowGui());
}
}
enum Direction {
UP(0, -1),
DOWN(0, 1),
LEFT(-1, 0),
RIGHT(1, 0);
private int x;
private int y;
private Direction(int x, int y) {
this.x = x;
this.y = y;
}
public int getX() {
return x;
}
public int getY() {
return y;
}
}
