So today I was messing with my crowned dove simulator again. You know, that little virtual pet thing I built ages ago? Well, suddenly it felt like the poor bird was wading through molasses. Everything moved stupid slow. Like, real slow. Annoying slow.
First Attempt: Just Making Stuff Faster?
My first dumb idea? Just crank up the speed manually! I went digging into the animation loop code. Found the bit where I set how fast frames update. Changed the number from, say, 60 to like, 120. Hit run. Total disaster! The animations went nuts, wings flapping like a crazed hummingbird while the poor bird’s body sort of juddered across the screen like it was having a fit. Yeah, no. That looked terrible and wasn’t actually smoother at all. Just faster chaos. Shut it down fast.
Actually Looking At The Problem
Alright, time to actually figure out why it was crawling. Opened up the developer tools in my browser. Clicked over to the performance tab. Time to see where it’s actually spending all its time. Ran the recording while the simulator was chugging. Waited… grabbed some coffee… waited some more… finally got the results. Looked like this giant messy chart.
Scrolled through it. Lots of tiny blocks everywhere. Hard to see at first. Then my eye caught something dumb. Real dumb.
- Huge Lists: Turns out every little interaction, like dropping a virtual seed, was causing the code to loop through the entire list of objects in the scene.
- Drawing Everything Constantly: My code was redrawing the entire screen background, the perch, every single tiny seed on the ground, feathers… literally everything… even if nothing changed. Every. Single. Frame.
Staring at it, felt kinda embarrassed. It was doing so much extra work for no reason.
The Fix Is Actually Simple
Didn’t need super complex algorithms or dark magic. Just needed to stop being lazy with the code.
- Stop Drawing When It Isn’t Needed: Found where my code draws the background and the static parts of the perch. Wrapped that drawing code in an `if` statement. Basically: “Hey, only draw this background stuff ONCE when the game starts, or if something super drastic changes (like the background mode itself changes). Otherwise, skip redrawing it constantly!” Big win.
- Target The Stuff That Moves: For the dove itself and the interactive bits like food falling, those do need updating every frame. Kept the drawing code specifically for those moving parts inside the main animation loop where it belongs. But only for the bits that are actually moving!
- Make Lists Smarter: Found all those loops that were running through every object in the scene. Changed them. Instead of looping through the giant list of everything, I made separate, much smaller lists just for the things that matter for that specific action. Like, checking for dropped seeds? Only loop through the tiny list of seeds on the ground now, not the trees, the clouds, the hidden poop objects… everything!
Saved the file. Took a deep breath. Hit run again.
Instant Difference, Pure Luck?
The crowned dove took off! Smooth as butter now. Flapping looked natural, hopping felt quick and responsive. No more weird lag when dropping food. It just felt… right. Exactly how I imagined it years ago, finally actually happening.
Looking back, it was such basic stuff. Stupid even. Drawing everything constantly? Dumb. Looping through giant lists when you only need one tiny part? Mega dumb. Felt kinda silly it took me so long to catch it with the tools.
Moral of the story? Sometimes your code isn’t doing some complex thing wrong. Sometimes it’s just doing way too much stuff it doesn’t need to do. Check the fundamentals before trying fancy fixes!
