Xaml Wpf Snake game

Question

I'm doing a game in Xaml WPF and I didn't really choose the tools and languages. It's to be hidden in a really big app with a lot of code.

The whole snake takes place in a simple xaml canvas and xaml.cs file here.

Actually, the snake became really laggy after being taller than 20 part, and even before the speed is absolutely not constant.

I don't know a lot about game programming but I'm doing software for a while now. How can I improve this game, make speed less dependent on snake size, and make it lag way less with the same computer perf?

I think the more important is the paintSnake method called every timer Tick.

private void paintSnake(Point currentposition)
{
    cleanSnake();
    paintSnakeHead(currentposition);
    paintSnakeBody(currentposition);
}
private void cleanSnake()
{
    var count = paintCanvas.Children.Count;
    var toDel = count - (NbBonus + 1);
    paintCanvas.Children.RemoveRange(NbBonus + 1, toDel);
}
private void paintSnakeHead(Point currentposition)
{
    var rot = GetRotation();
    RotateTransform aRotateTransform = new RotateTransform();
    aRotateTransform.CenterX = 0.5;
    aRotateTransform.CenterY = 0.5;
    aRotateTransform.Angle = rot;
    _headBrush.RelativeTransform = aRotateTransform;
    Rectangle headRect = new Rectangle();
    headRect.Fill = _headBrush;
    headRect.Height = headSize;
    headRect.Width = headSize;
    Canvas.SetTop(headRect, currentposition.Y);
    Canvas.SetLeft(headRect, currentposition.X);
    //On decale tout les point du snake
    snakePoints.Insert(0, currentposition);
    paintCanvas.Children.Add(headRect);
    int count = snakePoints.Count;
    // Restrict the tail of the snake
    if (count > length)
    {
        snakePoints.RemoveAt(length);
    }
}
private int GetRotation()
{
    switch (direction)
    {
        case (int)MOVINGDIRECTION.DOWNWARDS:
            return 180;
        case (int)MOVINGDIRECTION.UPWARDS:
            return 0;
        case (int)MOVINGDIRECTION.TOLEFT:
            return 270;
        case (int)MOVINGDIRECTION.TORIGHT:
            return 90;
        default:
            return 0;
    }
}
private void paintSnakeBody(Point currentposition)
{
    for (int i = 1; i < snakePoints.Count; i++)
    {
        //On ne dessinne un cercle que tout les headsize position
        if (i % headSize == 0)
        {
            Rectangle bodyRect = new Rectangle();
            bodyRect.Fill = _bodyBrush;
            bodyRect.Height = headSize;
            bodyRect.Width = headSize;
            Canvas.SetTop(bodyRect, snakePoints[i].Y);
            Canvas.SetLeft(bodyRect, snakePoints[i].X);
            paintCanvas.Children.Add(bodyRect);
        }
    }
}

Answer 1

I'm going to review only the code in your post.

---

You don't use WPF as you have to. In WPF you don't need to perform clear/draw sequence. The right way is to use MVVM and update coordinates of the snake's blocks in view-model. In XAML you will have ItemsControl with Canvas as its panel. ItemsSource should be bound to collection of blocks and each item should have bindings for Canvas.Top and Canvas.Left.

In fact each item will be wrapped to ContentPresenter where there is no your bindings to coordinates, so you can consider to write your custom Canvas-based panel which will search for coordinates in each child.

I'm just describing the right way you should work with WPF, there are variants how you'll implement all this stuff.

---

This naming of enum and its fields is wrong:

MOVINGDIRECTION.DOWNWARDS
MOVINGDIRECTION.UPWARDS
MOVINGDIRECTION.TOLEFT
...

You should follow naming guidelines for types and public members:

MovingDirection.Down
MovingDirection.Up
MovingDirection.Left
...

---

What is the purpose of casting enum values to int?

case (int)MOVINGDIRECTION.DOWNWARDS:

Yes, I see on your GitHub repo that all your direction fields have type of int. But why? Let those fields be of MovingDirection type.

---

Also I suggest to go away from your switch and use Dictionary:

private static readonly Dictionary<MovingDirection, int> RotationAngles =
    new Dictionary<MovingDirection, int>
{
    [MovingDirection.Down] = 180,
    [MovingDirection.Up] = 0,
    [MovingDirection.Left] = 270,
    [MovingDirection.Right] = 90,
};

private int GetRotation()
{
    return RotationAngles.TryGetValue(direction, out var angle)
        ? angle
        : 0;
}

But it's just another way. switch is not a problem in your case since there are only 4 possible directions and this situation will not be changed in the future.