Android MotionEvent ACTION_MOVE efficiency. How to improve performance? - android

I am currently working on an app that allows for free-drawing.
The current method I am using is as follows:
currentLine is a list that keeps a history of all points that ACTION_MOVE returns.
public boolean onTouchEvent (MotionEvent event) {
switch (event.getAction()) {
case MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE:
Point p = new Point(event.getX(),event.getY());
currentLine.addPoint(p);
invalidate();
break;
}
return true;
}
I then take these points and draw them in the onDraw method of my class.
#Override
protected void onDraw(Canvas c) {
super.onDraw(c);
//Draw Background Color
c.drawColor(Color.BLUE);
//Setup Paint
Paint p = new Paint();
p.setStyle(Style.FILL);
p.setColor(COLOR.WHITE);
//iterate through points
if(currentLine.size()>0){
for(int x = 0;x<currentLine.size();x++){
c.drawCircle(currentLine.get(x).getX(), currentLine.get(x).getY(), 3, p);
}
}
}
And this method works great, with no lag or anything.
Except, it does not get enough of the points that it needs to.
For example, if I am to drag my finger quickly across the entire screen, it may only draw 15 points of the whole event.
How can I improve the performance/speed of the MotionEvent? How can I get more points? Or is there something else I should be doing?
----EDIT----
I have managed to solve it myself.
Instead of using drawCircle, I switched to drawLine.
Example:
if(points.size()>0){
for(int x = 0;x<points.size()-1;x++){
c.drawLine(points.get(x).getX(), points.get(x).getY(), points.get(x+1).getX(), points.get(x+1).getY(), p);
}
}
This produces solid lines, which is what I wanted.
However, for the sake of knowledge, I would still like to know how to speed up MotionEvents.
A detailed answer would be appreciated

The bottleneck is the drawing method, obviously.
If you are working on android 3.0+, draw all those crazy things on the GPU.
Add the attribute
android:hardwareAccelerated="true"
to the <application> tag in your manifest. This will unbelievably increase drawing time.
Additionally, try to not redraw the whole thing if only a little needs to be updated.
Invoke invalidate(Rect dirty) instead of invalidate().

You should also get more points by utilizing event.getHistoricalX/Y() functions

Put a small thread sleep in the motion event; that helped me solve the problem when a ton of movement events were jamming the listener.
Thread.sleep(100);

invalidate(); is harmful for performance. Try to calculate bounds rect and call invalidate(bounds)

Related

Dragging objects using ACTION_MOVE

I am trying to make all my drawn Sprites dragable for a little game. It should be able to touch anywhere and the sprites should move the same distance, the finger moves.
With the following method they will move on an ACTION_MOVE event, but only very slow, a shorter distance and sometimes they dont:
addToX/Y only adds the gap to the coordinates of the sprites
#Override
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent evt){
switch(evt.getAction()){
case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
break;
case MotionEvent.ACTION_MOVE:
if(getHistorySize() > 0){
for(int i = 1, n = evt.getHistorySize(); i < n; i++){
int calcX = (int) getHistoricalX(i) - (int) getHistoricalX(i-1);
int calcY = (int) getHistoricalY(i) - (int) getHistoricalY(i-1);
for(Sprite sprite : spriteList) {
sprite.addToX(calcX);
sprite.addToY(calcY);
}
}
}
return true;
}
Any ideas on this?
Assuming your Sprite class is an (potentially-indirect) extension of android.view.View, then you can use setOnDragListener() to define an onDrag() override for them. Then you can use startDrag(...) on them to begin the drag. This is typically triggered by a long-press gesture on the view to be dragged, but in your case you can trigger it from within onTouchEvent() in ACTION_MOVE once (or even ACTION_DOWN). See here for more details on these methods.
Also, with respect to the code you posted, one issue with it that probably explains why it doesn't always work is that you are only using the historical points (which may or may not have accumulated on any particular call to onTouchEvent()). Whether or not getHistorySize() is greater than 0, you should still also use evt.getX() and evt.getY() on each call to onTouchEvent(). But of course, if you use the drag listener approach I suggested instead, you won't need to worry about this.
Update per comment
If you want to move all of the sprites at once, you can put the sprites into a full-screen FrameLayout and attach a GestureDetector that uses a GestureDetector.SimpleOnGestureListener to capture onScroll() callbacks and then calls scrollTo() on the FrameLayout. When the parent FrameLayout scrolls, all of its children sprites will appear to move together.

Speed up bitmap animation in custom View

In my custom view i have 1 animation that i need to run at demand (on tile click). Currently i am using this method:
public boolean onTouchEvent(MotionEvent event) {
switch(event.getAction()){
case MotionEvent.ACTION_DOWN:
//check what tile for clicked
getHandler().removeCallbacks(explosionThread);
getHandler().post(explosionThread);
}
}
break;
}
return super.onTouchEvent(event);
}
So i am calling (or sending to view thread, to be specific) a Runnable that calls it self until it comes to an end of an image...
private Runnable explosionThread=new Runnable(){
#Override
public void run() {
invalidate();
if(expCount<15){
getHandler().postDelayed(this, 10);
}
}
};
In my onDraw() method i implemented logic to go threw bitmap and draw it on screen ( using cnavas.drawBitmap(bitmap,srcRect,destRect,paint)....
Now, I want to avoid using SurfaceView (i have only 1 animation and View uses less resources).
I think the animation is slow because onDraw needs to draw whole screen each time invalidate() is called witch can be slow ( drawing 64 tiles with png images). I know that there is an overload of invalidate method, invalidate(Rect dirty) but i don't really know how to use it. If u think that that is the answer please write how to avoid drawing whole onDraw method ( or what method can I overwrite that is used by invalidate(Rect) method, if there is any).
If you have any other better way to speed up animation post it plz.
Thanks in advance....
That's right. One of the way to speed up rendering through canvas is to use invalidate(Rect). Rect passed to invalidate method defines area which will be redrawn. Your onDraw will be called after invalidate with clipping region being set up on canvas. So all your "drawBitmap" will be clipped by the rect.
for running the animation are using a .gif file or you are using a sequence of images run on a thread to show as an animation ?

Confusion over Canvas/OpenGl Techniques

I'm a completely newbie to android programming, having done some java for my computing levels but nothing too complex!
I'm working on a game where an object falls down the screen and has to be sorted into the relevant 'box' when it reaches the bottom.
I've got a surface view running with a thread etc, using canvas draw methods, however, i can't for the life of me see how i will be able to make the falling object reach a speed where it'll present a challenge to the user.
Running the thread with a change of 1 in the y direction causes the object to crawl down the screen. Greater changes in Y lead to jumpy graphics.
Would OpenGL make any difference or are there other canvas methods i can implement?
Hope that makes sense!
Thanks in advance
----Thread------
public void run()
{
Canvas canvas;
while(running)
{
canvas = null;
try{
canvas = this.surfaceholder.lockCanvas();
synchronized(surfaceholder)
{
gamepanel.Check();
this.gamepanel.onDraw(canvas);
}
}finally
{
if(canvas != null)
{
surfaceholder.unlockCanvasAndPost(canvas);
}
}
}
}
----SurfaceView-------
protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas){
canvas.drawBitmap(BitmapFactory.decodeResource(getResources(), R.drawable.gamebackground), 0, 0, null);
SortItOut.sortitout.Letter.draw(canvas);
}
-----Letter----- (Each object is a different letter)
public static void draw(Canvas canvas)
{
y += 1;
canvas.drawBitmap(LetterObject, x, y, null);
}
Those are the methods i would believe are relevant (The Check method is simply to check whether the object has reached the bottom of the screen).
You must load all your bitmaps in the constructor for the SurfaceView, never in onDraw()
Aside from the bitmap loading problem, you can make it fall faster my increasing the rate of the y change. If you do it too much, the box will appear to jump, but I bet you could get away with up to 10 pixel changes before that would happen (experiment).
You would only need to do OpenGL in this case if performance was slowing you down. I don't think that's the case. Although, I would stop loading the bitmap in the onDraw method and put it in the onCreate or some constructor. onDraw gets called hundreds of times and that's killing your app.

What are the basics of dealing with user input events in Android?

I thought I had understood this question, but something is quite wrong here. When the user (me, so far) tries to press keys, nothing really happens, and I am having a lot of trouble understanding what it is that I've missed.
Consider this before I present some code to help clarify my problem: I am using Android's Lunar Lander example to make my first "real" Android program. In that example, of course, there exist a class LunarView, and class nested therein LunarThread. In my code the equivalents of these classes are Graphics and GraphicsThread, respectively.
Also I can make sprite animations in 2D just fine on Android. I have a Player class, and let's say GraphicsThread has a Player member referred to as "player". This class has four coordinates - x1, y1, x2, and y2 - and they define a rectangle in which the sprite is to be drawn. I've worked it out so that I can handle that perfectly. Whenever the doDraw(Canvas canvas) method is invoked, it'll just look at the values of those coordinates and draw the sprite accordingly.
Now let's say - and this isn't really what I'm trying to do with the program - I'm trying to make the program where all it does is display the Player sprite at one location of the screen UNTIL the FIRST time the user presses the Dpad's left button. Then the location will be changed to another set position on the screen, and the sprite will be drawn at that position for the rest of the program invariably.
Also note that the GraphicsThread member in Graphics is called "thread", and that the SurfaceHolder member in GraphicsThread is called "mSurfaceHolder".
So consider this method in class Graphics:
#Override
public boolean onKeyDown(int keyCode, KeyEvent msg) {
return thread.keyDownHandler(keyCode, msg);
}
Also please consider this method in class GraphicsThread:
boolean keyDownHandler(int keyCode, KeyEvent msg) {
synchronized (mSurfaceHolder) {
if (keyCode == KeyEvent.KEYCODE_DPAD_LEFT) {
player.x1 = 100;
player.y1 = 100;
player.x2 = 120;
player.y2 = 150;
}
}
return true;
}
Now then assuming that player's coordinates start off as (200, 200, 220, 250), why won't he do anything different when I press Dpad: Left?
Thanks!
Before I would worry about actual movement and the like I would consider Log...
Something like:
Log.d("lunar", "keyCode = ["+String.valueOf(keyCode)+"] // msg = ["+String.valueOf(msg)+"]");
In doing so I can get a feel for what the system is registering before I worry about what I do with said registered data... After that you can decide if you're even sending it the right stuff and can then worry about thread work etc.
Hopefully that can help diagnose etc.(All of this was written freehand, may contain errors)
Throw away LunarLander and use a real guide: Playing with graphics in Android

Scrolling a Canvas smoothly in Android

I'm new to Android.
I am drawing bitmaps, lines and shapes onto a Canvas inside the OnDraw(Canvas canvas) method of my view. I am looking for help on how to implement smooth scrolling in response to a drag by the user. I have searched but not found any tutorials to help me with this.
The reference for Canvas seems to say that if a Canvas is constructed from a Bitmap (called bmpBuffer, say) then anything drawn on the Canvas is also drawn on bmpBuffer. Would it be possible to use bmpBuffer to implement a scroll ... perhaps copy it back to the Canvas shifted by a few pixels at a time? But if I use Canvas.drawBitmap to draw bmpBuffer back to Canvas shifted by a few pixels, won't bmpBuffer be corrupted? Perhaps, therefore, I should copy bmpBuffer to bmpBuffer2 then draw bmpBuffer2 back to the Canvas.
A more straightforward approach would be to draw the lines, shapes, etc. straight into a buffer Bitmap then draw that buffer (with a shift) onto the Canvas but so far as I can see the various methods: drawLine(), drawShape() and so on are not available for drawing to a Bitmap ... only to a Canvas.
Could I have 2 Canvases? One of which would be constructed from the buffer bitmap and used simply for plotting the lines, shapes, etc. and then the buffer bitmap would be drawn onto the other Canvas for display in the View?
I should welcome any advice!
Answers to similar questions here (and on other websites) refer to "blitting". I understand the concept but can't find anything about "blit" or "bitblt" in the Android documentation. Are Canvas.drawBitmap and Bitmap.Copy Android's equivalents?
I seem to have found an answer. I have put the bulk of the drawing code (which was previously in onDraw()) in a new doDrawing() method. This method starts by creating a new bitmap larger than the screen (large enough to hold the complete drawing). It then creates a second Canvas on which to do the detailed drawing:
BufferBitmap = Bitmap.createBitmap(1000, 1000, Bitmap.Config.ARGB_8888);
Canvas BufferCanvas = new Canvas(BufferBitmap);
The rest of the doDrawing() method is taken up with detailed drawing to BufferCanvas.
The entire onDraw() method now reads as follows:
#Override protected void onDraw(Canvas canvas) {
super.onDraw(canvas);
canvas.drawBitmap(BufferBitmap, (float) -posX, (float) -posY, null);
}
The position variables, posX and posY, are initialised at 0 in the application's onCreate()method. The application implements OnGestureListener and uses the distanceX and distanceY arguments returned in the OnScroll notification to increment posX and posY.
That seems to be about all that's needed to implement smooth scrolling. Or am I over-looking something!?
I had this problem too,
I did the drawing like this:
Canvas BigCanvas = new Canvas();
Bitmap BigBitmap = new Bitmap(width,height);
int ScrollPosX , ScrollPosY // (calculate these with the onScrollEvent handler)
void onCreate()
{
BigCanvas.SetBitmap(BigBitmap);
}
onDraw(Canvas TargetCanvas)
{
// do drawing stuff
// ie. BigCanvas.Draw.... line/bitmap/anything
//draw to the screen with the scrolloffset
//drawBitmap (Bitmap bitmap, Rect src, Rect dst, Paint paint)
TargetCanvas.DrawBitmap(BigBitmap(new Rect(ScrollPosX,ScrollPosY,ScrollPosX + BigBitmap.getWidth(),ScrollPosY + BigBitmap.getHeight(),new Rect(0,0,ScreenWidth,ScreenHeight),null);
}
for smooth scrolling you'd need to make some sort of method that takes a few points after scrolling (i.e the first scroll point and the 10th) , subtract those and scroll by that number in a for each loop that makes it gradually slower ( ScrollAmount - turns - Friction ).
I Hope this gives some more insight.
Continuation of reply to Viktor ...
In fact, the situation is more complicated. Because the doDrawing process is quite slow (taking 2-3 seconds on my slow old HTC Hero phone) I found it desirable to pop up a Toast message to advise the user that it was happening and to indicate the reason. The obvious way to do this was to create a new method containing just 2 lines:
public void redrawBuffer(String strReason) {
Toaster.Toast(strReason, "Short");`
doDrawing();
}
and to call this method from other places in my program instead of doDrawing().
However, I found that the Toaster either never appeared or flashed up so briefly that it could not be read. My workaround has been to use a time check Handler to force the program to sleep for 200 milliseconds between displaying the Toast and calling doDrawing(). Although this slightly delays the start of a redraw I feel this is a price worth paying in terms of the program's usability because the user knows what is going on.
reDrawBuffer() now reads:
public void redrawBuffer(String strReason) {
Toaster.Toast(strReason, "Short");
mTimeCheckHandler.sleep(200);
}`
and the Handler code (which is nested within my View class) is:
private timeCheckHandler mTimeCheckHandler = new timeCheckHandler();
class timeCheckHandler extends Handler {
#Override
public void handleMessage(Message msg) {
doDrawing();
}
public void sleep(long delayMillis) {
this.removeMessages(0);
sendMessageDelayed(obtainMessage(0), delayMillis);
}
}`
No need for the activity to be restarted! (Per prepbgg's Jan 27 10 reply to his Jan 17 10 'answer') Rather than recycling the bitmap and incurring the overhead of having the activity reloaded, you can avoid having the application loaded by putting the 'android:configChanges' attribute shown below, in the 'activity' element of the AndroidManifest.xml file for the app. This tells the system the the app will handle orientation changes and that it doesn't need to restart the app.
<activity android:name=".ANote"
android:label="#string/app_name"
android:configChanges="orientation|screenLayout">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.MAIN" />
<category android:name="android.intent.category.LAUNCHER" />
</intent-filter>
</activity>
This method can be used to get a notification when the orienation is changed:
public void onConfigurationChanged(Configuration newConfig) {
super.onConfigurationChanged(newConfig);
prt("onConfigurationChanged: "+newConfig);
if (newConfig.orientation == Configuration.ORIENTATION_PORTRAIT) {
prt(" PORTRAIT");
} else {
prt(" LANDSCAPE");
}
} // end of onConfigurationChanged
prepbgg: I don't think the code will work because canvas.drawBitmap does not draw into the bitmap but draws the bitmap on-to the canvas.
Correct me if I am wrong!

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