Timers

Given the nature of video games and the fact that they're strongly event-based, every game development tool must have a way for you to cause a delay, or a wait time, before something happens. For instance, when you're playing an online death match game, where your character can die and then respawn, usually, the respawn event doesn't happen the instant your character dies but a few seconds later. There is a multitude of scenarios where you want something to happen, but only after a certain amount of time. This will be the case for our EnemyCharacter, which will be throwing dodge balls every few seconds. This delay, or wait time, can be achieved through timers.

A timer allows you to call a function after a certain amount of time. You can choose to loop that function call with an interval and also set a delay before the loop starts. If you want the Timer to stop, you can also do that.

We will be using timers so that our enemy throws a dodge ball every X amount...