How to use AGS Part 9 (Timers) Video Lecture | Learn and Master: Adventure Game Studio (AGS) - Game Development

welcome back in the last video we
created mr. Donatello and we put him in
the the closet of the main hall by
signing his starting ex and starting Y
locations in the main hall in this video
we're gonna talk a little bit about what
AGS calls timers and we're gonna use
that timer to have mr. Donatello started
yelling at Sammy from within the closet
saying you know let me out of the closet
so we're gonna you do that with timers
but before we get into that I want to
actually address an error that I did in
the last video if you just take what I
did in the last video and try to run it
I'm just gonna click run here you get an
error and it says there were compilation
errors see the output window for details
so if I click OK now it's opened up a
new output window down at the bottom of
the screen and I'm gonna expand that out
so we can talk about it and I'll show
you how to fix this if you ever get this
error
it says unexpected error string is too
long
V donatello normal max length equals 14
well what that is that's referring to
the view that we created the viewed
Donatello normal view and it says max
length equals 14 what it's saying is
this is a this is too long
AGS allows you to have a maximum of 14
letters when you're assigning 14
characters when you're assigning a view
name so that's easily fixable let's go
up to the to the project tree expand
views now I'm gonna right click on V
done at ello normal and I'm gonna rename
it and I'm gonna take out a couple of
letters it's actually 16 characters at
this point so I'm gonna take out the
vowels here for normal and that'll
reduce it down to exactly 14 and I'm
gonna do the same thing for the V
donatello speech because it's 16
characters as well so I'm gonna take out
those so now we fixed the error so now
if we click run it should run fine and
it does and you can see mr. Donatello is
in the closet just where we told him to
be and notice too that he that the other
characters obey the walk-behind areas
too I notice that the walls are being
drawn on top of mr. Donatello so you
know it's not just Sammy its objects and
everything else that obeys the walk the
walk behind areas great so we've done
that now let's let's have mr. Donatello
yell a couple things from the closet
well the first thing we want to do is
put a closet door here
right now he doesn't need to yell
anything to Sami because he's not really
trapped in the closet at this point
there's no door to the closet so let's
add one it says show this room's nothing
let's change that to objects to look at
our objects now the door we're gonna add
is actually going to be an object
because we want it to be dynamic and
that we want to be able to remove the
door later in the game when Sami opens
it so I'm gonna right-click
approximately where I want the door to
be I'm gonna say new object here I go
over to the object properties and I set
the image of the object to 469 now I'm
going to drag the the object in the room
down so that the door is right on top of
the of where we want it to be so now I
drag it over a little bit so now mr.
Donatello is stuck in the closet like he
like he should be like all mr. Donatello
should be no I guess that was right the
first time sorry so now let me click on
the object let me change the description
of the object to closed door and I'm
gonna change the name of the object 204
object closed door like that so we can
refer to it in the script so now let's
set up something called a timer so that
we can put put mr. Donatello on a timer
and have him after three seconds he'll
say something and then I'm in the room
so let's click on events for the further
room actually means select the room
instead I'm gonna click on events and
now the event that we want that we want
to set up now is actually the room
before fade in this this event right
here is really for setting up things in
the room for example like timers or if
you wanted to set up flags or just to
sort of do general bookkeeping on the
room or initializing of the room before
the room is actually drawn to the screen
well our timer is one of those things so
let's before the fade in let's set up
let's click on the ellipsis button and
that creates a new a new function for us
and now here we want to do a set timer
function set timer open parenthesis and
now it wants two things from this that
wants a timer ID and a timeout
well the timer ID can be any number of
from 1 to 20 it just allows up to 20
timer so I'm gonna say 1 comma and then
the timeout now in a GS there's there
usually about 40 what are called game
loops per second so basically to get the
time if we wanted him to this timer to
fire after 3 seconds what we will do is
we just say 40 game loops per second
times 3 seconds is 120 game loops so
that's that's what we set the timeout to
basically the algorithm is you just take
the number of seconds you want times 40
and that's the number that you want to
set therefore for timer so in this case
we want 340 times 3 is 120 so now we've
got the timer set up but now we need to
actually use that timer so we go back to
the to the room we go over to the events
of the room again and now there's
another event that we have to set up and
that's for the repeatedly execute I
mentioned this event earlier when I was
talking about the the events for the
room the repeatedly execute event fires
every single game loop now when I keep
referring to game loops what that is is
is in the engine there's actually a loop
that happens there's a set of there's
there's a set of things that happen in
the game and then the game resets and it
sort of does those over and over again
and those are called game loops well
those again those happen for about 40
times per second so what this will do
repeatedly executes is every single time
one of those loops occurs it will call
this repeatedly execute it will fire
this a repeatedly execute event so this
repeatedly execute event basically ends
up getting fired at 40 times a second
and the reason that you might want this
is because maybe you want to check a
flag or in our case we want to check a
timer we want to see if the timer has
expired
so what we can do is we can just say to
the two AGS hey if the timer is expired
have mr. Donatello say something well
what you can do is you can say if now
there's a function called is timer
expired open parentheses and now it
wants a timer ID which timer are you are
you wanting to check to see if it's
because if it's expired well in this
case we want to check timer one and now
you open you put
open curly brace and close curly brace
that's the shift square brace right next
to the P key on American keyboards and
what that will do is that will actually
everything within those curly braces is
going to be executed if that if if the
timer is expired in this case so if the
timer is expired we want mr. Donatello
to say something mr. Donatello dot say
Sammy get me out of here okay but
there's one more thing we need to do and
after a timer has expired
basically it doesn't get called again it
does not get reset unless you set it
again so here we want to have mr.
Donatello say Sammy get me out of here
and then immediately we want to set that
timer again so that after three seconds
again he will he will say the same thing
so set timer set timer one timeout value
of 120 that way it'll just basically
reset the timer so that it will be
called again in three seconds so let's
try that out and see how that works I
click run the game runs okay and after
three seconds mr. Donatello says Sammy
get me out of here okay and if we wait
another three seconds he says it again
but notice what's happening every single
time he says that watch my mouse cursor
okay we get an hourglass if I'm walking
somewhere in the room while mr.
Donatello says something well I'm
walking over here and mr. Donatello says
something I can't I can't control Sammy
at all well while he's saying that what
I would really like to do is I want this
to sort of happen in the background I
don't want to get that hourglass cursor
so the way that you would do that is
instead of saying mr. Donatello are C
Donatello say there's another function
that we can use that works just like say
it's called say background so I'm gonna
change it from C from saying say to say
say background and basically what that
does is that says have the character say
this but have him say it in the
background so that we don't get an
hourglass cursor and it doesn't affect
the players ability to play the game
so let's run that again after three
seconds mr. Donatello says Sammy get me
out of here but notice I don't have a an
hourglass cursor anymore so he keeps
saying for three seconds he's like Sammy
get me out of here he's really impatient
to get out of the closet but notice that
I can still what I wanted to show is
notice that I can still walk around I
can still look at the books on the wall
on the shelf like we had set up before
so everything everything is still set up
properly okay great
that's really what I wanted to cover in
this video is just to say to show how to
to set up a timer and to have something
happen after that timer is expired in
the next video we will randomize what
mr. Donatello is saying in the
background and then I'm gonna change it
from from three seconds to something a
little bit more reasonable so that he's
not just continuously saying something
maybe every 10 seconds we'll have him
say something so that'll be on the next
video we'll talk a little bit about
randomization see you then guys