I'm a little worried if I implemented a gametick that the events in game will cause the GameJPanel components to show through for half a second then get replaced. I'm thinking if I had some sort of game tick I wouldn't be having this issue, however, I am not 100% certain. So currently I am at a loss on what to do. However, once I did this what happened was that the GameJPanel started to replace OptionJPanel components (because of the events. Have a Button on GameJPanel that when pressed causes the OptionJPanel to show on top of it and having its JPanel 50% transparent (so it gives the affect it dims the GameJPanel). I figured I could make JLayeredPane that holds GameJPanel and my OptionJPanel. This JPanel is the one that contains the components that get revalidated/repainted etc. I have a GameJPanel which currently has all the components on it. Rather, my thought was when a component got changed or needed to be updated just simply revalidate/repaint that component on the fly rather than repainting the whole screen. Because of this I didn't think I would need to implement a Game Tick.

How to play repainted games