Timers - A better way of doing them?

jigglybean

In my upcoming game, a player is given an extra life every 3 minutes, once they lose a life, or all of them. Once the player runs out of lives, they are taken to a new scene and this is the current problem.

The counter sits on zero minutes for almost 5-10 seconds before displaying how long (example +3 minutes, then +2 etc) I dont have it counting down in seconds, although this would nice be.

I need a way of the game calculating the time faster. Is this even possible? My current work around is to have a 'please wait' displayed and vanish after 8 seconds. Any ideas?

pHghost

I made a demo of how it can be implemented. I set it up with max 3 lives and 15 seconds to get a life, for quicker testing, but you can just switch the necessary numbers.

The white square follows your mouse and loses a life when it touches a red square.

If the lives are under 3, then every 15 seconds you get +1 life.

Marchief

There is a template on gs helper as well that will work for calculating the time passed since the last addition as well so it works if they quit the game.

pHghost

@jigglybean said:
In my upcoming game, a player is given an extra life every 3 minutes, once they lose a life, or all of them. Once the player runs out of lives, they are taken to a new scene and this is the current problem.

Wait, they get an extra life when they lose a life? So they don't lose a life at all? COnfused here.

The counter sits on zero minutes for almost 5-10 seconds before displaying how long (example +3 minutes, then +2 etc) I dont have it counting down in seconds, although this would nice be.

The timers in GameSalad are fast enough, especially if you are talking about time in minutes. I made a timer app using GS and it works perfectly. There has to be something in your game logic which causes this behavior.

How are your rules set up?

jigglybean

The timer only starts if a player loses a life already. Max of 5 lives. The idea being that they can purchase more, but I have removed that option for now.

I will look at the code again and take a screen grab.

jigglybean

thanks all. I will have a play this weekend