[gameprogrammer] Java Advice - 2D RTS Graphics

Hey folks, how's everyone doing, you're all looking lovely today. :)

I've been working on a Java game that's most closely related to an RTS in 
presentation. Strictly 2D, with lots of units (I actually had 22,000 units on 
the screen at once while I was testing, although that's definately overkill...).

This is the first game I've ever tried to create, and I'm not "formally" 
trained in Java - picking up things as I go along. I've been using SWING 
components for my display, with three JPanels - one for the Mini Map, one for 
the orders interface, and the other containing the main game screen. 

In the game screen, I've been using a 2000x2000 pixel image as the map. All of 
the units and special features (buildings, destruction, etc) are drawn on top. 
As you can probably guess, my current method of doing this is pretty intensive, 
and may be restricting me in what I'm actually able to do.

Given the above considerations, should I be looking at using something like the 
lwjgl or openGL or something like that? Or will my Graphics2D calls work well 
enough with a bit of tweaking? I'd love to be able to increase the resolution 
of the background map, since zooming in to see the units in better detail makes 
the map look understandably pixelated... I'd love to be able to redraw only 
certain portions of the screen to reflect unit movement / attacks / whatever as 
it happens, and even more, I'd love to be able to include health-bars on the 
units without having to dread the thought of the performance hit...

That, plus I love to learn new things... ;)

What do you guys think? Is a jump to a real graphics toolkit the answer I'm 
looking for?

And in case you're curious, I've got some screenshots of the current interface 
here:
http://lordgank.proboards30.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1126661947

Please don't mind the graphics - the unit images are basically just tile-based, 
and for testing purposes I'm using avatars from message boards until I can 
design my own unit images...

Thanks for the read, guys! :)
-Mike

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