Game Development: Construction Method (Java Design Pattern)

If you want to extend a Class and do some stuff, before the super constructor gets called, you can do the following:

Create static methods, which return everything your super constructor needs.
Here is a simple example from LibGDX. I wanted to extend ScrollPane and provide some additional predefined values.

What I wanted to do is:

• children of my ScrollableWidget should always sit in the middle
• both scrollbars should always be active
• children should always sit in the middle of a bigger container (overscrolling)

public class ScrollableWidget extends ScrollPane {

    public ScrollableWidget( 

        int scrollWidth, int scrollHeight, 

        int childWidth, int childHeight, Actor child, Skin skin) {

 

        super(construct(childWidth, childHeight, child), skin);
        setSize(scrollWidth, scrollHeight);
        setScrollBarPositions(true, true);
        layout();
        setScrollPercentX(.5f);
        setScrollPercentY(.5f);

    }

    private static Actor construct( 

        int width, int height, Actor child) {

 

        Group container = new Group();
        container.setSize(width,height);
        child.setPosition(width/2-child.getWidth()/2,height/2-child.getHeight()/2, Align.bottomLeft);
        container.addActor(child);

        return container;
    }
}