Game Time.. Use Seconds or alterable value?

[DaveC]

So I'm making a game where time is pretty important for scoring.. I'm worried that if my game lags it will either unfairly punish or help the player by making time slower or faster than it should be relative to the rest of the goings ons in the game..

so the question, do I use the built in timer and have an event say:
Every 1 second, subtract 1 from timer

or do I have an event using values like
always add 1 to value time
time=100 subtract 1 from timer (100 being hundredths of seconds..? lol)

or will this do the same thing? argh!

[Anders]

Depends on a number of things like if you are using timer based movements. If you are then using 'every' is more correct. If you are using your own movement types that are tied to the execution speed of the events, then go with an 'always' approach.
Also consider if slowing down time (on ancient devices) will make the game easier?

[DaveC]

I'm using the PMO for my main movement.. which is that? it runs so perfect on 4S.. argh damn old technology!

[mobichan]

I am using a mix of custom movement based on alterable values counting down every frame and some objects use clickteam movements. I have noticed when the game slows down, that the objects with custom movements slow down but the objects with clickteam movements actually move more. Not faster, but farther. For example, I have coins that spawn from killed enemies. The coin pops up and then falls to the ground. I used vector movement for this for ease of implementation. But when the game runs slower, the coin pops up almost twice as high, sometimes going out of frame (which triggers code that destroys it). Is there some way to synch the clickteam movements to slowdown with the game? I want to avoid frame skipping if possible.

Mobichan

[jregork]

I'm still curious about this. Do we know which the PMO goes with? I used a ground up engine on my current game, but am considering moving to the PMO in the future. I'm hoping it's tied to the events, not the timer.

[Anders]

I'm pretty sure PMO is tied to the event loop speed (not using timers). I don't think the author coded it with low-end devices that need speed independent games in mind back in 2003 I'm afraid.

[jregork]

That is what i figured, but then distantj was having problems with slowdown on older ios devices where the player speed and enemy speed were falling out of sync....

[jregork]

Ok my confusion is less so now. I reread his post and he was using timer based on the enemies because timer based alleviates slowdown (just skips frames) and that is where the problem was.