vb.net more performance for moving objects

Question

I have the mission to make a small game for a school project. Pictures boxes, moved by a timer for walking enemies.If there are around 5 or 6 moving picture boxes at the form, my application get troubles and lags. After I kill some enemies (remove them from the Controls Collection of the Form/Panel) It come back smooth.

I think the loop of the enemy movement is too complicated but I don't know how to make that simpler.

Private Sub TimerEnemyMovement_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles TimerEnemyMovement.Tick
    For Each Enemy As Control In PanelBackground.Controls
        If Enemy.Name.Substring(0, 5) = "Enemy" Then
            _enemy.MoveEnemy(Enemy, 2)
        End If
    Next
End Sub

I also thought about Multithreading but not sure this would solve the problem and there is also the problem that I can't access the Controls of my mainform.

You see, I don't have much knowledge about vb.net

Any ideas how to fix that lag?

Answer 1

VB.NET WinForm apps aren't the ideal setup to create games or moving objects. The Painting of the form uses to much performance as you have found out.

Try moving to a VB.NET WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) application it handles graphics a lot better.

Answer 2

Try this:

Private Sub TimerEnemyMovement_Tick(ByVal sender As System.Object, ByVal e As System.EventArgs) Handles TimerEnemyMovement.Tick
    SuspendLayout()
    For Each Enemy As Control In PanelBackground.Controls
        If Enemy.Name.Substring(0, 5) = "Enemy" Then
            _enemy.MoveEnemy(Enemy, 2)
        End If
    Next
    ResumeLayout()
End Sub

Answer 3

Just a couple of suggestions, that may improve speed

a) Rather than going through through all the controls, how about storing them in an array / list b) old game trick is to draw the scene in memory and then copy it to screen .. so why not have a memory bitmap (or graphic) draw the "enemies" to this and then copy to entire bmp to screen once all is done

Answer 4

Do all the enemies need to move at the same time? Do some move faster?

if there are 6 enemies, you could move 1,3,5 on the first tick, then 2.4.6 on the next tick etc.

?

Answer 5

I've been using XNA for creating a simple game, it was really cool. Though VB.NET is not officially supported, you can make it work. It's optimized for scenery and large number of animated objects.