Question

First time I ever ask a question here so correct me if I´m doing it wrong.

Picture of my chess set:

Every time I move a piece it lags for about 1 second. Every piece and tile has an Image and there is exactly 96 Images. Every time I move a piece it clears everything with black and then update the graphics.

In the early stages of the chess I didn’t have any Images and used different colors instead and only a few pieces there was no noticeable lag and the piece moved in an instant.

        public void updateGraphics(PaintEventArgs e, Graphics g, Bitmap frame)
    {
        g = Graphics.FromImage(frame);
        g.Clear(Color.Black);


        colorMap(g);

        g.Dispose();
        e.Graphics.DrawImageUnscaled(frame, 0, 0);
    }

The function colorMap(g) looks like this:

        private void colorMap(Graphics g)
    {
        for (int y = 0; y < SomeInts.amount; y++)
        {
            for (int x = 0; x < SomeInts.amount; x++)
            {
                //Tiles
                Bundle.tile[x, y].colorBody(g, x, y);

                //Pieces
                player1.colorAll(g);
                player2.colorAll(g);
            }
        }
    }

The colorAll function executes every pieces colorBody(g) function which look like this:

        public void colorBody(Graphics g)
    {
        //base.colorBody() does the following: body = new Rectangle(x * SomeInts.size + SomeInts.size / 4, y * SomeInts.size + SomeInts.size / 4, size, size);
        base.colorBody();

        if (team == 1)
        {
            //If its a white queen
            image = Image.FromFile("textures/piece/white/queen.png");
        }
        if (team == 2)
        {
            //If its a black queen
            image = Image.FromFile("textures/piece/black/queen.png");
        }
        g.DrawImage(image, body);
    }

and finaly the function that moves the piece:

        public void movePiece(MouseEventArgs e)
    {
        for (int y = 0; y < SomeInts.amount; y++)
        {
            for (int x = 0; x < SomeInts.amount; x++)
            {
                if (Bundle.tile[x, y].body.Contains(e.Location))
                {
                    //Ignore this
                    for (int i = 0; i < queens.Count; i++)
                    {
                        Queen temp = queens.ElementAt<Queen>(i);
                        temp.move(x, y);
                    }
                    //Relevant
                    player1.move(x, y);
                    player2.move(x, y);
                }
            }
        }
    }

Thank you for reading all this! I could make a link to the whole program if my coding examples is not enough.

Answer 1

You’re calling Image.FromFile in every refresh, for every image – effectively reloading every image file every time from disk.

Have you considered loading the images once, and storing the resulting Images somewhere useful? (say, an array, Image[2,6] would be adequate)