Time delays and game loop
<p>I'm doing a simple match-3 game and I'm currently using a game loop like the code below. I'm using some frame calculations for optimal speed of th game. I took this from another game that I have done before. But this seems unnecessary for this type of game.</p>

<p>I need to have some time delays at several places, like when I have moved an object on the game area, I want a short time delay before the call to an method that check if there is a match of three objects in a row. And then I also need a short time delay when the code has detect a match, so that I can do some simple effect at those positions in the game grid before the user starts to move another object and then check for a match.</p>

<p>As it is now every thing happens at once and I wonder if it would be better to run this game without this calculations of frames and how I could do instead to get some time delays? 
I have tested to use <code>Thread.sleep(250)</code> inside this code, but didn't worked the way I hade hoped for.</p>

<p>What could be a better approach for running a game like this?</p>

<pre><code>// Game loop ---------------------------------------
@Override
public void run() {
    // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    long beginTime;
    long timeDiff;
    int sleepTime;
    int framesSkipped;

    sleepTime = 0;

    while (gameRunning) {
        if (!surfaceHolder.getSurface().isValid())
            continue;

        try {
            canvas = surfaceHolder.lockCanvas();

            beginTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
            framesSkipped = 0;

            // Different game states
            switch (gameState) {

            case 0: // Intro game
                drawStartPage(canvas);
                break;

            case 1: // Play game
                canvas.drawRGB(0,0,0);

                if(touchActionDown) {
                    touchActionDown = false;
                    colorObjectManager.checkPosition(touchX, touchY);
                    touchActionMove = false;
                }

                if(touchActionMove) {
                    touchActionMove = false;
                    colorObjectManager.swapObject(moveDirection);
                    // Time delay
                    colorObjectManager.checkMatch();
                    // Time delay
                }

                // Call method to draw objects on screen
                colorObjectManager.drawObjectsList(canvas);
                break;

            case 2: // End game

                break;

            }

            // Calculate difference from first call to
            // System.currentTimeMillis() and now
            timeDiff = System.currentTimeMillis() - beginTime;
            // Calculate sleepTime
            sleepTime = (int) (FRAME_PERIOD - timeDiff);

            if (sleepTime &gt; 0) {

                try {
                    Thread.sleep(sleepTime);
                } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                }
            }

            while (sleepTime &lt; 0 &amp;&amp; framesSkipped &lt; MAX_FRAME_SKIPS) {
                // Call method to only update objects on screen
                updateObjects();
                sleepTime += FRAME_PERIOD;
                framesSkipped++;
            }

        } finally {

            surfaceHolder.unlockCanvasAndPost(canvas);

        }

    } // End while-loop
}

// End game loop ---------------------------------------
</code></pre>
