Wait Question

Scripting
1

Hi all,

When teaching young students it can be difficult to explain the following code and I’m wondering if there may be an easier way to write this - perhaps using wait or waitforseconds which would remove the need for the additional variables and Time.time business:

var ball : GameObject;
var nextspawn : float=0.0;
var spawninterval : float=0.5;
function Update () {
	
	if (Time.time>nextspawn){
		nextspawn=Time.time+spawninterval;
		Instantiate(ball,transform.position,transform.rotation);
	}
	
}

Any thoughts on ways to simplify the above (for teaching purposes) would be appreciated.

Thanks

Jeff

2

If students can’t understand the code as it is, perhaps psuedo code is the way to go?

3

Something like:

function Update () { 
    
   if ( currentTime > timeOfNextSpawn){ 
      // Update time of next spawn
      timeOfNextSpawn = currentTime + spawnInterval; 
      
      // Create a new ball
      CreateNewBall();
   } 
    
}

Comments would also help the students!

4 
var ball : GameObject; 
var spawnInterval : float = 0.5;

function Start () {
   InvokeRepeating ("Spawn", .01, spawnInterval);
}

function Spawn () {
   Instantiate (ball, transform.position, transform.rotation);
}

(I used .01 there because InvokeRepeating seems to have issues with 0.0).

–Eric

5

Eric, can InvokeRepeating run faster than Update? i.e. Is it run as it’s own thread?

6

Thanks very much for the ideas.

The Invoke concept should be perfect.

I thought I’d seen a script recently which simply used an Instantiate followed by a wait(2) or something like that - is that possible?

Thanks

Jeff

7

Yes and no. (Yes, you can make it run faster than Update, but no, it’s not technically a separate thread.)

var ball : GameObject; 
var spawnInterval : float = 0.5; 

function Start () { 
   while (true) {
      Instantiate (ball, transform.position, transform.rotation);
      yield WaitForSeconds (spawnInterval);
   }
}

–Eric

8

Heya Eric5h5,

For my purposes, that last one is perfect and I think the easiest to explain.

Many thanks again

Jeff