If the other actors (the ones that get shot at by the player) move around on their own, it would be best to create a new world for the 'question'/'prompt'/'answer entry' part of the scenario. If not, a boolean is all that is needed to signify 'in question mode' or not to determine what actions to perform. If using a seperate world to perform the question/answer part, then (with MainWorld as the main world, QWorld as the world to perform the question/answer part and Player as the player-controlled actor with a 'shoot' method to perform the shooting: The act method of QWorld should get and display valid keystrokes; and when the 'space' key is returned, check the answer, calling shoot in the player class if correct; and then return to the main world. The whole time that QWorld is active, the main world will be in a 'paused' state, without being displayed. I have a PauseWorld class that can be used to show the current state of the main world without actually being in the main world, if you wish for the current state to be displayed while the question is being dealt with. You can either sub-class it with QWorld or make it your QWorld by adding the appropriate code for dealing with the question in it.

thank you so much for your reply. does that mean the player will be able to actually type out the answer first? i don't understand what you mean by keystrokes.

You said that a word is typed out and the spacebar is then pressed. Each character, the letters of the word and the space, constitutes one keystroke. And yes, I was saying that it will be possible to allow the player to type the answer first, no matter which way you decide to go as far as either using a new world or working in the same world.

so basically what you're saying is that i create a separate world, which will be the box where the player answers the questions. and then to see if the answer is right or wrong i will use a boolean method? thx

You do not have to create a seperate world. You can go either way; however, the deciding factor, if you are not sure which way that you want to go, should be in how your actors movements are contolled. That is, if you have actors that move randomly or continuously (without any user control), you probably would want to use a seperate world, otherwise using an actor in the current world or using a seperate world would be equally viable. If you prefer to have the little box at the bottom of the screen for entering the word, then you may want to draw the box onto the background of the world and use an actor for the cursor within the box. Put the keyboard detection code in the class of the cursor. Store the input in a static string field in the cursor class and add a public static method to return a copy of the string, clearing its value to an empty string when returned. The cursor should have a non-static string field to be used during input and when the space key is pressed, move the value to the static field and remove the cursor from the world. In the class of the main actor, have the first thing done in the act method be to get the value of the static field in the cursor class. If it returns an empty string process the code that you currently have in that act method. If not, check the string returned to the correct answer and determine the action to take from that. If using the little box and other actors move randomly or continuously, you can put a condition on their movement: if(getWorld().getObjects(Cursor.class).isEmpty()) { move code here} Sorry, if this sounds a little complicated. But, for what you are trying to do, it does take a little know-how. I may post a Cursor class for you later and explain how to have it work with your main actor.

What is the format of the input string? will you be using all uppercase (or lowercase; or a mix)? what characters are allowed (alpha, numeric, symbols)? how long can the string be? what text editing control are you allowing? As far as the cursor, you can use a seperate class for the cursor OR you can have a class for edit-able text that will show the cursor on its image with the text when it has focus.

@danpost the format of the input string? I'm using lowercase only, alphabets only. what do you mean by text editing control? please, i still do not understand what you wrote about the cursor. could you explain agin?

How do you think I can make a game like this: http://www.pembinatrails.ca/fortrichmondcollegiate/compsci/greenfoot/typing-tutor/typing-tutor-export/typing-tutor.html I want to learn how the programmer made the box for typing.