Dart | Learn C Games Programming Blog

Category: Dart

Tiled is the clear winner

Posted on February 18, 2026 by David

I thought maybe the non-tiled hex map program mentioned in my last blog entry would be easier to work with and as fast but just to be on the safe side, I measured the frame rate of both programs.

I did this with a nifty bit of Flutter code ceated by an AI that I’ve included below. I added it to the program created by Alexander Shevelev who wrote a Medium article about using Flutter + Flame + Tiled. That’s his program running.


import 'dart:math' as math;
import 'dart:ui';
import 'package:flame/components.dart';
import 'package:flame/events.dart';
import 'package:flame/game.dart';
import 'package:flame/input.dart';
import 'package:flame_tiled/flame_tiled.dart';
import 'package:flame_tiled_example/background.dart';
import 'package:flame_tiled_example/tile_info.dart';
import 'package:flutter/foundation.dart' show kIsWeb;
import 'package:flutter/scheduler.dart';
import 'package:flutter/widgets.dart' hide Animation, Image;
import 'package:web/web.dart' as web;

class FpsCounter {
  // Singleton instance
  static final FpsCounter _instance = FpsCounter._internal();

  factory FpsCounter() => _instance;

  FpsCounter._internal();

  bool _running = false;
  int _frameCount = 0;
  double _elapsedMs = 0;

  double fps = 0;

  /// Start measuring FPS
  void start() {
    if (_running) return; // avoid double registration

    _running = true;
    SchedulerBinding.instance.addTimingsCallback(_onTimings);
  }

  /// Stop measuring FPS and remove the global callback
  void stop() {
    if (!_running) return;

    SchedulerBinding.instance.removeTimingsCallback(_onTimings);
    _running = false;
    _frameCount = 0;
    _elapsedMs = 0;
    fps = 0;
  }

  /// Internal callback fired for every frame timing
  void _onTimings(List<FrameTiming> timings) {
    if (!_running) {
      return;
    }

    for (final t in timings) {
      _frameCount++;
      _elapsedMs += t.totalSpan.inMicroseconds / 1000.0;
    }

    // Update about 4 times per second
    if (_elapsedMs >= 250) {
      fps = _frameCount / (_elapsedMs / 1000.0);

      if (kIsWeb) {
        web.document.title = "Hex Map — ${fps.toStringAsFixed(1)} FPS";
      }

      _frameCount = 0;
      _elapsedMs = 0;
    }
  }
}
void main() { 
    WidgetsFlutterBinding.ensureInitialized(); 
    FpsCounter().start(); // 👈 start measuring FPS 
    runApp( Background( child: GameWidget(game: TiledGame()), 
    ), 
  ); 
}

That puts the FrameRate in the caption. My 40 x 40 hex frame rate was between 6 and 10 FPS,

The Tiled program displayed a 30 x 30 hex grid at just between 250 and 400 FPS! A clear and deserved winner.

The joys of Flutter web

Posted on February 16, 2026February 18, 2026 by David

Originally I was going to use Tiled to draw hexagons in a Flutter web game. But it seemed easier to do it manually without having to worry about working with the .tmx format which is an all singing format based on a XML file structure, and seems more suited to static maps.

My game includes a map generator although that’s not hooled up yet.

I’ve been doing experiments and have a Flutter web program displaying a 40 x 40 hexes map, complete with text. It does this at around 6-10 fps. This is on a 3 1/2 year old PC. I think it should be sufficent frame rate for a web strategy game. It also displays images and there’s a faint one on the sizth row.

If you look very closely in the middle of the ninth row you might see a hex with the value 2 that’s been clicked on with a faint circle highighting it.

The hexes aren’t quite meshing together with a solid border so that needs sorting.

Don’t get Flutter and Dart mixed up

Posted on August 26, 2025August 26, 2025 by David

I’m working on a game with a Flutter web client and two Dart terminal programs hence the visual pun. Annoyingly, you can’t compile a Dart exe for Linux on a Windows PC. You can do that in C# but I prefer to use Dart.

I have all the classes in two files (one is called classes.dart) and because I’m using JSON to persist game data, I use the build_runner package from pub.dev. Just add this before any classes:

@JsonSerializable()

Make sure if you have enums that every enum value has

@JsonValue('houses')

before it and add functions like this for each class you want to persist; in this case a Location class:

factory Location.fromJson(Map<String, dynamic> json) =>
    _$LocationFromJson(json);

Map<String, dynamic> toJson() => _$LocationToJson(this);

Then when it’s all done, do this to generate a file that handles loading and saving the specified classes.

dart run build_runner build

Along the way though I managed to get Flutter into a Dart program. I’m using SQLite but only in Dart, not in the Flutter app. Unfortunately I used the kIsWeb constant to exclude some calls (when the classes are used by the Flutter app) in my classes file. But you can’t do that in a pure Dart program, it will not compile. Instead I wrote my own function.

bool isWeb() {
  return !Platform.isWindows && !Platform.isLinux;
}

Interestingly, the definition of kIsWeb in the API is this below, so it might be worth trying that out.

const bool kIsWeb = bool.fromEnvironment(‘dart.library.js_util’);