Timers

[Le_juiceBOX]

I very confused about timers. Whenever i try something it fails, could someone give me a script and explain it please?


thanks.

[Sheepolution]

Are you trying to use love.timer to get some sort of clock going? That's not what love.timer is for.

If you want a timer you can do something like this:

Code: Select all

function love.load()
	time = 0
	timeLimit = 4
end


function love.update(dt)
	time = time + dt
	if time >= timeLimit then
		--Stuff happens
		time = 0 --optional if you want it to happen repeatedly
	end
end

If this is not what you meant, please elaborate on your question.
Also, check out the library tick.

[s-ol]

Are you trying to use love.timer to get some sort of clock going? That's not what love.timer is for.

If you want a timer you can do something like this:

Code: Select all

function love.load()
	time = 0
	timeLimit = 4
end


function love.update(dt)
	time = time + dt
	if time >= timeLimit then
		--Stuff happens
		time = 0 --optional if you want it to happen repeatedly
	end
end

If this is not what you meant, please elaborate on your question.
Also, check out the library tick.

One thing I usually recommend is to, instead of counting from 0 to a hard limit, to count from an initial value to 0. That way you never need to store the limit seperately:

Code: Select all

timer = 4

function love.update(dt)
  time = time - dt
  if time <= 0 then
    -- do stuff
    time = 4 -- if you want to restart
  end
end

[davisdude]

Well if you want it to repeat you would need to store that value separately, so it's pretty much the same in that case.

[Inny]

Code: Select all

timer = 4

function love.update(dt)
  time = time - dt
  if time <= 0 then
    -- do stuff
    time = 4 -- if you want to restart
  end
end

If you were trying to accurately time something to happen every 4 seconds, this clock would rapidly lose milliseconds. For instance, 60FPS is a dt value of rougly 0.016, which would be 240 ticks of this clock before it fired. However you rarely get an even 60fps and will periodically see a dropped frame here and there. One easy source of dropped frames, for instance, is the player resizing their window. So, on the last frame before the timer fires, your timer variable will be 0.01. Subtract 0.016 from it and you have -0.015, which you lose by setting the new timer to 4. After several minutes if this, your clock will be off by a second. If you were trying to keep time with your game's music (because it's a music-based shooter, or a guitar-hero/frets on fire clone), your game is unplayable.

The easy easy fix, is to ADD the new timer value, rather than SET it.

Code: Select all

function love.update(dt)
  time = time - dt
  if time <= 0 then
    time = time + 4 -- This fix is to add.
  end
end

[Jasoco]

Just use a timer library like Cron. It makes it so much easier and painless.