Is there a faster possible way to rewrite this?

[schoolcs002]

I have been working on a project where I am recreating the character rendering from the colony sim dwarf fortress (and other old games) and I am trying to create code to re-render the screen fast enough that it would not be annoying to drag around to look somewhere else (the goal is 30 fps, but 5 is probably more achievable).

Explanation for what my custom block that does all of the rendering is doing, and what feeds into it:

My code takes in an image that is pink and white and splits each image 16 times horizontally and vertically, and then replaces the white with 16 different colors creating a massive list of costumes. I then have a block that takes in information about a location to place a character, the scale of the character, the color, and which character to draw out of the massive list of costumes. The block turns all of that information into a list containing a costume and the other rendering data, and puts it in a list of things to render, which are processed as fast as possible in a first in first out order. Finally, the information is taken out and then ran into this block which renders the character onto the screen.

Currently my code is capable of drawing a costume to the screen around 10,700 times every second at minimum, but that only allows for the whole screen to be refreshed 3 times per second, and that is without any gameplay code added which would slow it down more.

Here is what is contained within the block:

Which goes to a position, if this is the first time the code is ran, set the scale, and don't do that again, switches to the costume it is provided, and then stamps it onto the stage.

Any help with optimization, or suggestions will be appreciated.

[sarpnt]

this block has basically no code and i don't think it can run faster unless snap itself changes. you'll need to change the surrounding code. can you share the project?

[schoolcs002]

Here is my project:
https://snap.berkeley.edu/embed?projectname=DFFG%203.15.7%20Display%20Version%202&username=schoolcs002&showTitle=true&showAuthor=true&editButton=true&pauseButton=true

[sarpnt]

this runs 7 times faster

deleting the first item from the list repeatedly is slow. run the whole list at once then throw the whole thing out. the custom block also made this a bit slower and harder to work with anyways so i inlined it.

warping also massively increases the performance. if you can't get away with warping the whole render queue (it's a queue, not a stack), this is the fastest way i found:

600 characters are warped at a time until the queue is done

EDIT: one more suggestion for performance, i'm guessing you very rarely need to change the size. make it a completely separate type of command. checking the type is a fast way to do that:

[bluebaritone21]

So, you're implementing curses? Check out ncurses(1) to see how to use the original. Also, Dwarf Fortress is not an old game.