Coding the PongGame class

The first thing we will do is solve the problem of our PongGame class not being of type View. Update the class declaration as highlighted, like this:

class PongGame extends SurfaceView {

You will be prompted to import the android.view.SurfaceView class as shown in the next image:

Click OK to confirm.

SurfaceView is a descendant of View and now PongGame is, by inheritance, also a type of View. Look at the import statement that has been added. This relationship is made clear as highlighted next.

android.view.SurfaceView

Note

Remember that it is because of polymorphism that we can send descendants of View to setContentView method in the PongActivity class and it is because of inheritance that PongGame is a type of SurfaceView.

There are quite a few descendants of View that we could have extended to fix this initial problem, but we will see as we continue that SurfaceView has some very specific features that are perfect for games that made this choice the right one for us...