onTouchEvent() of Activity fires 3 times?

Question

In my TitleScreen activity, I have...

@Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event)
{
   Log.d("MyActivity", "in onTouchEvent!");

   MediaPlayer myplayer = MediaPlayer.create(TitleScreen.this, R.raw.mysound);
   myplayer.start();
   startActivity(new Intent("com.example.GAME"));
   return super.onTouchEvent(event);
}

This was causing the sound to play 3 times in rapid succession upon tapping the screen, making the sound I wanted to play have a delayed echo. I checked the logs, and my "in onTouchEvent!" message was logged 3 times.

This activity is just a static image for a title screen, and the idea is you tap it to start the next activity, and when you do so, the specified sound should player.

For my particular issue, I was able to solve it by placing a global level int variable:

private static int playerInstances = 0;

and then wrapping my MediaPlayer lines with:

if (playerInstances == 0)
{
    MediaPlayer myplayer = MediaPlayer.create(TitleScreen.this, R.raw.critical1);
    myplayer.start();
    playerInstances++;
}

This insured that that code only executed once. So my problem is solved. I'm just wondering why I was getting onTouchEvent three times in one tap.

Answer 1

What you can actually do on your onTouchEvent (better than using the static variable) is:

@Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) {
   final int action = event.getAction();

   if(action == MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN) {
       Log.d("MyActivity", "in onTouchEvent!");
       MediaPlayer myPlayer = MediaPlayer.create(TitleScreen.this, R.raw.mysound);
       myPlayer.start();
       startActivity(new Intent("com.example.GAME"));
   }
   return super.onTouchEvent(event);
}