is there a wait command?

[noah]

Hi,
Is there any way to make the unit pause for a specified amount of time before continuing? Something like the sleep function you can put in C++ (I understand that this is C++ but can you use other libraries?) or the wait __ function on Scratch.

I want to do something like this:
guy 1: don't do it!
[2 second pause]
guy 2: I'll do what I need to!
[2 second pause]
[continue with game, more plot blah, blah, etc]

I hope I've made what I mean clear.
Thanks in advance,
-Noah

[Sorunome]

Yeah, it's called delay() (i think), where the argument is the delay in milliseconds (i think, or microseconds >.> )

[noah]

Yeah it is, thanks. I never worked out what micro and milliseconds actually accounted for in terms of a second, but delay(1000) make it pause for 1 second. I guess that's milliseconds?

[rodot]

You shouldn't use delay as it blocks everything happening in the background (in gb.update() actually) : sound, backlight, battery monitoring, buttons, etc, so you Gamebuino will be completely unresponsive for the duration of the delay. For example the user won't be able to skip the dialog or to get back to the menu.

The preferred way is to time events using gb.frameCount, which is incremented at each frame (each time gb.update() returns true). By default games run at 20 frames per second.
http://gamebuino.com/wiki/index.php?title=Gb.frameCount

[noah]

I was just going to say, everything seems to screw up when I used delay. So if I wanted a 2 second delay I should use gb.frameCount(40)?

[noah]

well... that didn't work. I looked at the example but that shows a blink.
I tried

Code: Select all

void loop(){
  if(gb.update()){
    if(gb.frameCount < 40){
      blah blah
    }else if(gb.frameCount < 80){
      blah blah
    }
  }
}


...but this didn't work, I'm assuming because I stayed more than two seconds on the title screen. What is the best way of implementing this, I just wanted a wait?!

[Sorunome]

You shouldn't use delay as it blocks everything happening in the background (in gb.update() actually) : sound, backlight, battery monitoring, buttons, etc, so you Gamebuino will be completely unresponsive for the duration of the delay. For example the user won't be able to skip the dialog or to get back to the menu.

[...]

Ah, right, I noticed that during writing of the engine of the RPG project thing. However, I couldn't use the other function stuff because of __reasons__ so I wrote a thing where it updates sound inside the interrupt, i already ran custom button code and it wouldn't be too noticable for backlight / battery monitoring to not be updated in a bit.

The all-interrupt sound thing can be found here, in case you are interested

Yeah it is, thanks. I never worked out what micro and milliseconds actually accounted for in terms of a second, but delay(1000) make it pause for 1 second. I guess that's milliseconds?

Micro and milli are actually super easy! (Thanks metric system!)
Micro --> 10^(-6)
Milli --> 10^(-3)

Or, like, if you have 12345 milliseconds that's the same as 12.345 seconds (just move the comma left by three)
If you have 12345 microseconds that's the same as 0.012345 seconds (just move the comma left by six)
Calculations in the other direction are just about moving the coma into the other direction ^.^

well... that didn't work. I looked at the example but that shows a blink.
I tried

Code: Select all

void loop(){
  if(gb.update()){
    if(gb.frameCount < 40){
      blah blah
    }else if(gb.frameCount < 80){
      blah blah
    }
  }
}


...but this didn't work, I'm assuming because I stayed more than two seconds on the title screen. What is the best way of implementing this, I just wanted a wait?!

The thing is that gb.frameCount returns the current frame count which is keep on increasing since the beginning of tiiiiime! (the program)
Here's a little example, which is untested, though:

Code: Select all

void wait(byte frames){
  gb.frameCount = 0; // reset the framecount
  while(gb.frameCount < frames){ // repeat the next until the framecount is equal to how many frames we want to wait
    while(!gb.update()); // wait until things need updating
    // right here you would put things to update the screen, if it got erased, that is (configurable via gb.display.persistence )
  }
}


That would however destroy the frame count, for without destroying something like this might work:

Code: Select all

void wait(int frames){
  frames += gb.frameCount;
  while(gb.frameCount < frames){
    while(!gb.update());
  }
}


However I don't know how well that handles with int-overflows

[noah]

@Sorunome on an unrelated note, I first heard of The Game two years ago and had forgotten about it since then. Now I keep losing. Thanks.

[Sorunome]

I edited in code examples in my previous post, not sure if you saw them (I thought nobody was online right now anyways )

[noah]

Thanks for the milli/micro thing! That really helps.

Awesome! I just used the first one, and it works. But does resetting the frame count ruin anything? At the moment I can't think of any reason why it might be a problem... but would it be better to use the other one?

Thanks, noah