is it cheaper to run timer another, or refer to other timer?

Questions & Answers
1

Hey everyone. Thanks for reading my question. Have multiple scrips running timers that could all line up and my question is: Would it be faster to have them all run their own timer, or refer to another scripts timer once a frame.

Something like this:

public int framesBetweenCheck = 50;
private int framesBetweenCheckTemp = 0;

private void FixedUpdate () {
        framesBetweenCheckTemp++;
        if (framesBetweenCheckTemp >= framesBetweenCheck) {
           // Do something;
        }
	framesBetweenCheckTemp = 0;
	}

or something like this:

private int framesBetweenCheckTemp = 0;
public GameObject _timer;
private TimerScript _timerScript;


private void Start () {
        _timer = GameObject.Find ("Timer");
        _timerScript = _timer.GetComponent<TimerScript> ();
}

private void FixedUpdate () {
        if (_timerScript.temp < 1) {
                // Do something
        }
}

I could be running this timer on a lot of scripts, so the cost or benifit would be amplified. Thanks again for reading my question!

2

I think it’s up to what’s your need from the timer script, because if you use a single component to manage this then you know that the counter is shared across all the objects that is checking for it.

If you’re fine with having a shared counter, then I’d suggest something like the second (a TimerScript) but using a delegate callback instead of check the value in each FixedUpdate cycle, for example:

TimerScript:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class TimerScript : MonoBehaviour {

	public System.Action callback;
	public int framesBetweenCheck = 50;
	private int framesBetweenCheckTemp = 0;

	void FixedUpdate () {
		framesBetweenCheckTemp++;
		if (framesBetweenCheckTemp >= framesBetweenCheck) {
			// Do callback
			if (callback != null)
				callback();
			framesBetweenCheckTemp = 0;
		}
	}
}

Your other script:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Test : MonoBehaviour {

	void Start () {
		GameObject _timer = GameObject.Find ("Timer");
		TimerScript timerScript = _timer.GetComponent<TimerScript> ();
		timerScript.callback += OnTimerElapsed;
	}
	
	void OnTimerElapsed () {
		// Do something
		Debug.Log("OnTimerElapsed >> " + name);
	}
}