Move Card Animations to the EDT by johannes-wolf · Pull Request #14819 · magefree/mage

johannes-wolf · 2026-04-30T12:32:06Z

Issues Solved

Fix alpha-blending for the MTGO-style renderer
Moved animations to a single Swing Timer that processes all animations per tick-callback
Ported the idea of smoothing (limiting animation time-skips because of a busy EDT to a certain maximum) to the new implementation, removing the sampling
Animations no longer busy-wait when waiting for them to finish
Make sure the image download thread calls refreshGUIAndCards on the EDT

Further Changes

Animation API now returns CompletableFuture to schedule actions after animations complete (see use in BattlefieldPanel.java)
Decreased show/hide duration from 600 ms to 250 ms to make fade animations look “snappier”

Future Plans

Move the player life-point animation to the animation API (it currently uses a raw-thread and busy-waiting) – not part of this PR

Also remove the busy-loop that waits for card alpha values and make waiting for animations to finish possible. The UI is responsive during running animations.

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T15:19:14Z

Tested this change over > 10 real games - no crashes (anymore), worked smooth.

JayDi85 · 2026-05-01T15:31:57Z

Whats crashes are you talking about?

P.S. Also run debugger or visualvm and make sure no timer threads spamming on closed/disconnected games (it must be closed and cleaned on game end).

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T15:33:39Z

Whats crashes are you talking about?

P.S. Also run debugger or visualvm and make sure no timer threads spamming on closed/disconnected games (it must be closed and cleaned on game end).

Currently xmage crashes a lot during gameplay. From time to time it freezes and never comes back because of some threading/UI access issues. See the linked issue for example.
They are hard to reproduce. I could never catch them in a debugger.

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T15:37:55Z

P.S. Also run debugger or visualvm and make sure no timer threads spamming on closed/disconnected games (it must be closed and cleaned on game end).

Will do.

JayDi85 · 2026-05-01T15:38:41Z

Also it’s better stability test with 3 players game (play with x2 ai, concede and view ai only play).

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T15:40:33Z

I played 1vs1 and Commander online (> 10 games in total).

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T15:40:53Z

Will check lots of AI games :)

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T15:41:49Z

Are you positive about this PR overall? I would like to see it getting merged soon if everything works fine! I think it would improve stability a lot.

JayDi85 · 2026-05-01T15:44:44Z

Yes, it’s looks fine and legit, only static to local timer change raise the question.

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-01T18:52:21Z

Yes, it’s looks fine and legit, only static to local timer change raise the question.

That is no problem, as the (new) swing Thread does not spawn any real-thread but uses a shared timer thread and runs on the EDT. See https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/javax/swing/Timer.html.

I've added tracking of animations by game-id and source(-card), so if a lot of animations get scheduled for the same object, all old ones get canceled so they don't “fight” each other.

Tested with a lot of 8 player AI games + some temporary logging.

JayDi85 · 2026-05-02T05:24:18Z

There are two problems:

no fully finished animation (you must call update(1.0f) on cancel to make sure alpha return to normal value).

Non-concurrent hash maps and other animation refs. It's ok to make it concurrent as fast fix, but the real fix (maybe as another PR-task) will be in:

insert ThreadUtils.ensureRunInGUISwingThread() in all basic operations like start-cancel animation.
research all animation calls and replace non edt thread by invokelater (as example: images download run on diff thread and call GUISizeHelper.refreshGUIAndCards -- so that gui refresh must use swing thread).

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-02T07:38:48Z

I've added an update(1f) when we call cancel() on an unfinished animation. Currently this was done by the tasks running after the future got completed but I agree it is better to call the animation with its final state.
I double-checked all calls and they all happen on the EDT. The fix for the download thread is in a separate PR already Call GUI Refresh on EDT #14821. I added proper EDT checks as you suggested. The only point that can be non-thread safe are functions where we call cancel() as Swing makes sure that the animation timer runs on the EDT.

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-09T21:23:59Z

Update: I moved the changes to run refreshGUIAndCards on the EDT to this PR.
Can we merge this? I would like to use this one as a basis for further animation related improvements :)

JayDi85

Also make two lists in issue description:

fixed bugs and added features like massive animations support;
farther improvements and left bugs;

JayDi85 · 2026-05-10T00:54:01Z

+     * when finish() gets called.
+     */
+    private static final Map<UUID, Set<Animation>> activeByGameId = new HashMap<>();
+    private static final Map<Object, Animation> activeByTarget = new HashMap<>();


Concurrent problem still active - it’s can fail on multiple games/calls. Make it ConcurrentMap or call ensureGUIThread on any create/start/finish animation methods (that can change static lists)

Client and server allow to start multiple tables/games/ai - it’s can be a good use case for stability testing (start two parallel tables/games with ai, concede and keep active to view/switch between it by main menu).

Concurrent problem still active - it’s can fail on multiple games/calls. Make it ConcurrentMap or call ensureGUIThread on any create/start/finish animation methods (that can change static lists)

Done. I opted for the ConcurentMap – although, I checked that the code never gets called from non-EDT; but you are right, it is safer that way.

Client and server allow to start multiple tables/games/ai - it’s can be a good use case for stability testing (start two parallel tables/games with ai, concede and keep active to view/switch between it by main menu).

I already did a lot of testing with parallel AI games and did a litte re-test now – all fine.

One thing that is noticeable: Since we can now run animations truly async the speed at which AI player play the game against each other can lead to stuttering and a slow client. This is not a problem with human controlled games, as no one untaps and taps like 20+ permanents per second ;).

I guess, since we know the total number of animations per game, we could cancel animations to make sure we are not running more then n animations per game at a time.

as no one untaps and taps like 20+ permanents per second

But that's a normal use case, e.g. cancel on massive mana payment, start/cancel all attack button or some tap/untap effects with a big battlefield. Make sure it's fine and do not freeze the client.

You can use test mode to generate big battlefields:
https://github.com/magefree/mage/wiki/Development-Testing-Tools#server-test-mode

Thank your, I will try that.

as no one untaps and taps like 20+ permanents per second

But that's a normal use case, e.g. cancel on massive mana payment, start/cancel all attack button or some tap/untap effects with a big battlefield. Make sure it's fine and do not freeze the client.

You are right. And I am very unhappy with the performance of this PR when tapping 25+ permanents at once. I will switch back to the old raw Timer but make sure we do UI stuff on the UI thread + keep the new API.

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-10T01:31:20Z

Also make two lists in issue description:
* fixed bugs and added features like massive animations support;
* farther improvements and left bugs;

I changed the PR description to a list.

JayDi85 · 2026-05-10T03:52:49Z

            // extra space for animation and other drawing
-            // WTF, I'm tired with render calcs, so make BIG draw spaces for any needs
-            MageCardSpace outerSpace = new MageCardSpace(width * 2, width * 2, height * 2, height * 2);
+            MageCardSpace outerSpace = getAnimationOuterSpace(width, height);


For info: there are card icons over card panel like commander icon -- it must have outer space for good drawing/repaint and rotation. Use "main menu - debug - render" to test it without real game.

For info: there are card icons over card panel like commander icon -- it must have outer space for good drawing/repaint and rotation. Use "main menu - debug - render" to test it without real game.

I will look into this 👍, should be no problem adding some border margin for the icons. This gives better performance as far as I noticed, as the old update-rects are huge.

Marked this PR as a draft, I will ping you if it is ready again.

With the latest change back to a single timer that handles all animation ticks in one go performance is on-par with the old implementation, even on huge boards (it stutters, but so did the old one).

johannes-wolf · 2026-05-12T16:37:10Z

I double checked cards bounding rect calculation there is still more then enough space for icons but we went down from 5 × card size to ~2 × card size
Animating masses of cards at once is on-par to the old implementation, performance wise
Updated the PR description to reflect new changes

johannes-wolf added 2 commits April 30, 2026 13:11

ui: Fix mtgo Card Renderer Alpha Blending

ae91e8a

Add missing initialization for timerTask

01c4b68

github-actions Bot added the client label Apr 30, 2026

Move Animations to the EDT

3e0dace

Also remove the busy-loop that waits for card alpha values and make waiting for animations to finish possible. The UI is responsive during running animations.

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch from dfc6e3d to 3e0dace Compare April 30, 2026 13:00

johannes-wolf mentioned this pull request Apr 30, 2026

CLIENT - unhandled error in GUI - NullPointerException #14808

Open

Group and Cancel Animations by Game Id

99790c5

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch from efda01d to 2c72330 Compare May 2, 2026 07:41

Update Animation to Final State on Cancel

6ed0e93

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch from 2c72330 to 6ed0e93 Compare May 2, 2026 07:42

johannes-wolf mentioned this pull request May 9, 2026

Call GUI Refresh on EDT #14821

Closed

johannes-wolf mentioned this pull request May 9, 2026

Fix MTGO Card-Renderer Alpha Blending #14818

Closed

JayDi85 requested changes May 10, 2026

View reviewed changes

Refresh GUI on EDT

c9eb1dc

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch from 3feb2b6 to c9eb1dc Compare May 10, 2026 01:29

johannes-wolf requested a review from JayDi85 May 10, 2026 01:32

Fix Additional Card Bounds Computation

d1cd8fa

JayDi85 reviewed May 10, 2026

View reviewed changes

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch from 2562974 to f47bdac Compare May 10, 2026 13:50

johannes-wolf marked this pull request as draft May 10, 2026 13:58

Use Single Animation Timer

34a2fc8

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch 2 times, most recently from 77a96ad to 8c37d1b Compare May 10, 2026 23:34

Improve Card Space Calculation

bc33cb6

johannes-wolf force-pushed the move-card-animation-to-edt branch from 8c37d1b to bc33cb6 Compare May 12, 2026 16:34

johannes-wolf marked this pull request as ready for review May 12, 2026 16:34

johannes-wolf requested a review from JayDi85 May 12, 2026 16:37

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