Is there a way to speed up these Threads? (Rendering Problems)

[anro]

Hi everyone!

I'm new to your forum and I logged in because I need some help with my threads.

Im writing a game inside a JFrame using Netbeans' swing. In that game there are several Ants running around.
To set them alive I invoke Threads on them, that do the run() method. I want them to be rendered realtime.

My problem is, that the Ants I use are very, very slow. If I use 20 of them the prog is lagging as hell.

Maybe someone has a idea how to make more than 100 Threads run smoth.
Here's some pseudocode:

public Ant(Node pos) {
  this.pos = pos;
  this.trace = new Vector<Node>(); trace.add(pos)
} // constructor
public void run() {
  //timer uses the move(Node n) method, delay = 500;
}
public void move(Node n) {
   pos = n; trace.add(n);
   drawPosition();
}
public synchronized void drawPosition() {
 // renders a BufferedImagefile and displays output to panel
 // this is called by every Thread every delay millisecs, so it is
 // almost always active
}
public void main() { // not really main but this is what happens with my ants
  Ant a = new Ant(1,1);
  Vector<Thread> threads = new Vector<Thread>();
  Thread t1 = new Thread(a); threads.add(t1); t1.start();
}

The Ants need to have a way to save Information on where they already have been and additionally need to have a timer to not run away too fast.

anro

[Tolls]

Why have them as separate threads?
I can sort of see the thinking, but I suspect you're sticking a load of overhead on that you don't actually need.
Try a single thread that simply cycles through the ants and moves them, presumably informing the EDT when a move cycle is complete.

[camickr]

Here is an example that uses thousands of animated balls:

forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5339511&start=1

[anro]

Thank you for your advice!!:D

I took a look at the balls example and learned a lot from it.
And it works!!

First I kept repainting the Panel for each ant and the problem remained the same.
Then I just repainted the Panel every delay millisecs and now I am able to let up to 1000 ants live.

It seems that the panels draw method is very expensive.

Sincerely yours.
anro

[Tolls]

Yep.
As that thread points out you want to minimise the calls to draw.
Do your drawing behind the scenes (buffering).