Continuous Touch Event:

In this article, I will present easy way, how to catch continuous touch event, properly, without issues.

Its especially useful while creating game controllers, where continuous touch event catching is necessary (ex. left right controller) we can easily achieve this by combining some touch events and using some logic. 

Lets say we have some kind of sprite, which supposed to execute certain action continuously (ex. move player on the X axis, by applying force) in my example I will use Rectangle class instead of sprite, its up to you what kind of entity will you use though.

1. Possible solutions:

final Rectangle button = new Rectangle(0, 0, 100, 100, vbo)
{
    @Override
    public boolean onAreaTouched(TouchEvent pSceneTouchEvent, float pTouchAreaLocalX, float pTouchAreaLocalY)
    {
        if (pSceneTouchEvent.isActionMove())
        {
	     // Handle your action here
	}
	return true;
    }
};

// our flag
private boolean isTouchedFlag = false;

// our button
final Rectangle button = new Rectangle(0, 0, 100, 100, vbo)
{
	@Override
	public boolean onAreaTouched(TouchEvent pSceneTouchEvent, float pTouchAreaLocalX, float pTouchAreaLocalY)
	{
		if (pSceneTouchEvent.isActionDown())
		{
			isTouchedFlag = true;
		}
		if (pSceneTouchEvent.isActionUp())
		{
			isTouchedFlag = false;
		}
		return true;
	}
	
	@Override
	protected void onManagedUpdate(float pSecondsElapsed)
	{
		if (isTouchedFlag)
		{
			// Execute your actions.
		}
		super.onManagedUpdate(pSecondsElapsed);
	}
};

• first of all, created new boolean/flag which will be used to store state of the button.
• as previously, crated our button using Rectangle button.
• overridden onAreaTouched method to catch touch events.
• if action isActionDown we set our flag to true (when player started touching button)
• if action isActionUp we set our flag to false (when player release his finger)
• this time, we also overridden another method, this time onManageUpdate checking if our flag is true, and if is, execute your actions.

This way, using update handler, we are checking on every update if there is actually condition such as continuous touch. Receiving fully responsive controller.