Alright, so today I’m gonna walk you through my experience messing around with something I’m calling “crazyslick.” It’s a personal project, nothing too fancy, but I learned a few things along the way, and figured I’d share.
It all started when I was trying to get a smoother, more responsive feel in one of my side projects. I was tinkering with some UI elements, and they just felt…clunky. Like they were dragging through mud. So I started digging around for ways to optimize things, and that’s when I stumbled on some interesting articles about reducing input latency and improving rendering performance.
First thing I did was dive into the code and start profiling. I used the built-in profiling tools to see where the bottlenecks were. Turns out, a lot of it was due to unnecessary calculations and inefficient rendering. There were a few spots where I was recalculating the same values multiple times per frame, which was just killing performance.
So, I started caching those values. Simple enough, right? Just store the results of the calculations and reuse them until they need to be updated. This alone made a pretty noticeable difference. The UI felt snappier, and the overall responsiveness improved.
But I wasn’t satisfied. I wanted more! I started looking at how I was handling input events. Turns out, I was processing every single input event, even if it wasn’t relevant to the current UI state. So I implemented a simple filtering system to only process the events that were actually needed. This reduced the amount of work the CPU had to do, and freed up some resources for other tasks.
Next, I tackled the rendering pipeline. I noticed that I was redrawing the entire UI every frame, even if only a small portion of it had changed. This was a huge waste of resources. So I implemented a technique called “dirty rectangle” rendering. Basically, I only redraw the parts of the UI that have actually changed since the last frame. This significantly reduced the amount of work the GPU had to do, and resulted in smoother animations and transitions.
I also experimented with different rendering techniques. I tried using hardware acceleration to offload some of the rendering tasks to the GPU. This worked well for some parts of the UI, but it also introduced some new challenges, like dealing with different GPU drivers and compatibility issues. So I ended up using a combination of hardware and software rendering, depending on the specific UI element and the target platform.
One of the biggest challenges I faced was dealing with input lag. It’s a complex problem, and there are a lot of factors that can contribute to it. Things like keyboard latency, mouse polling rate, and display refresh rate all play a role. I tried a few different techniques to reduce input lag, like using raw input and double buffering. Raw input bypasses some of the operating system’s input processing layers, which can reduce latency. Double buffering helps to prevent screen tearing and smooth out animations.
After a lot of tweaking and experimentation, I finally got to a point where the UI felt really smooth and responsive. It was a night and day difference compared to where I started. The animations were fluid, the input lag was minimal, and the overall user experience was much better.
- Cached calculations to avoid redundant work.
- Filtered input events to only process what’s needed.
- Implemented “dirty rectangle” rendering to minimize redraws.
- Experimented with hardware acceleration for rendering.
- Used raw input and double buffering to reduce input lag.
It wasn’t a perfect solution, and there’s always room for improvement. But it was a valuable learning experience, and I’m happy with the results. Plus, I now have a much better understanding of how to optimize UI performance and create a more responsive user experience.
So, yeah, that’s my “crazyslick” journey. Hopefully, some of these tips and techniques will be helpful to you in your own projects. Good luck, and happy coding!
