make a timer

hasani2007

Hello I want to make a timer in maze.The timer should countdown to reach 0 and if the player doesn't reach to end he/she lose the game. I want to denote that if player reach to end timer should stopped working. How can I do it? Thanks anyone help me.

Rajesh R Subramanian

I hope that you have the code for your "maze". What kind of application is it? Assuming your main thread has a message pump, you could run a timer on a separate thread, and have it post a message to the main thread after the time is over. There may be other messages to be processed in the queue, but then again, Windows isn't an RTOS...

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CPallini

Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:

but then again, Windows isn't an RTOS...

Too bad, sir: I need to kick out the player with the nanosecond precision... :-D :laugh: :-D

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Maximilien

Create a secondary thread with a CTimer and a countdown counter; I don't think this is much difficult. At each "pulse" (either compare delay or Sleep), send a message to the main application thread to display the time left and when the countdown is finished, send a message to the main application to display "You FAIL". Max.

Watched code never compiles.

Stephen Hewitt

Why bother with a secondary thread if you're going to use window messages to inform the main thread? A vanilla timer set using SetTimer[^] is quite capable of achieving the same result more efficiently.

Steve

KarstenK

a plain overview from a pro: http://www.mvps.org/directx/articles/selecting_timer_functions.htm[^] this should interest you http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc163996.aspx[^]

Press F1 for help or google it. Greetings from Germany

Software_Developer

Sir, Here is your timer hasani2007. Its in 'dirty c code', clean it up. set the variable count_down_time_in_secs in seconds for desired count down time. The Code is self explanatory. 1 minute = 60 secs 5 minutes = 60x5 secs 30 minutes =60x30 secs 1 hour = 60x60 secs

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

int main ()
{

unsigned int x\_hours=0;
unsigned int x\_minutes=0;
unsigned int x\_seconds=0;
unsigned int x\_milliseconds=0;
unsigned int totaltime=0,count\_down\_time\_in\_secs=0,time\_left=0;

clock\_t x\_startTime,x\_countTime;
count\_down\_time\_in\_secs=10;  // 1 minute is 60, 1 hour is 3600


x\_startTime=clock();  // start clock
time\_left=count\_down\_time\_in\_secs-x\_seconds;   // update timer

while (time\_left>0) 
{
	x\_countTime=clock(); // update timer difference
	x\_milliseconds=x\_countTime-x\_startTime;
	x\_seconds=(x\_milliseconds/(CLOCKS\_PER\_SEC))-(x\_minutes\*60);
	x\_minutes=(x\_milliseconds/(CLOCKS\_PER\_SEC))/60;
	x\_hours=x\_minutes/60;


 

	time\_left=count\_down\_time\_in\_secs-x\_seconds; // subtract to get difference 


	printf( "\\nYou have %d seconds left ( %d ) count down timer by TopCoder

",time_left,count_down_time_in_secs);
}

printf( "\\n\\n\\nTime's out\\n\\n\\n");

return 0;
}

. . . TopCoder

Stephen Hewitt

A busy loop is perhaps not the best way to go about things.

Steve

Aescleal

Hi Folks, nothing like coming late to the party but as no one has mentioned the way most games are written I thought I'd stick me oar in... In any game the timing is worked into the main dispatch loop. Every cycle around your dispatch loop you grab input, you update the timer, evolve the rest of the system based on how much time has elapsed and then render the game world according to what's happens. It looks something like this:

unsigned last_time = get_current_time_in_ms();

while( true )
{
/*
Record who's got keys pressed, where the mouse is, network stuff
*/

update\_IO\_state();

/\*
    Sort out how much time has elapsed and how much time we have to evolve the game state over
 \*/

unsigned time\_now = get\_current\_time\_in\_ms();
unsigned ms\_this\_loop = time\_now - last\_time;
last\_time = time\_now;

/\*
    Change the state of all the game objects
 \*/

evolve( ms\_this\_loop );

/\*
    Display the changes
 \*/

render();

}

All the functions take some additional parameters depending on how you store your game state. The key point of this lot is that the game hammers along flat out - the thread this is on will eat a CPU. It churns out frames as often as it can and slows down when there's something system intensive happening. Oh, and if you do your IO on another thread make sure everything is synchronised properly or something weird WILL happen, possibly not on your computer but on your first customer's computer. Hope that helps, Cheers, Ash