My sleep() function freezes whole game, ideas? (SOLVED)

Questions
1

Hello there!

I am making a simple tower defense game and right now I’m working on a reload mechanism in the game. I want a reload delay so this is the reload function I’ve come up with:

function reload(self)
sleep(0.6)
self.ammo = self.maxAmmo
msg.post(“hud”, “update”, {ammo = self.ammo, maxAmmo = self.maxAmmo})
print(“Reloaded!”)
end

My problem is with the sleep() function.

function sleep(n)
local t = os.clock()
while os.clock() - t <= n do
– Nothing
end
end

Whenever i run the sleep() function, the whole game freezes, for the determined time when running the function.

As you might understand, I don’t want the whole game to freeze during reload, is there anything I can do to fix this?
Either if you have another function I could use or is there any way I can modify my current one?

Thanks,
Richard

2 
local timer = require ("main.timer")

function reload()
	print("Reloaded!")
end

function init(self)
	timer.seconds(2, reload)
end


function update(self, dt)
	timer.update(dt)
end
5 Likes
3

I’ll try that, thanks :smiley:

1 Like
4

The problem with your sleep function is that you are busy-waiting for the required time to elapse. While you’re in the while-loop the engine will not continue to render more frames and execute other scripts etc.

Using something like the timer module pkeod posted will allow you to postpone a function call for a certain period of time without blocking execution. You could also do a dummy go.animate() call with a callback.

1 Like