How to use the On Timer condition?

I'm trying to set up a Timer on an object. Once a Human sprite has is in collision with a Tree sprite, it should start 'collecting' the wood resource every 2 seconds, adding to the Human's wood total variable, and deducting from the Tree's wood remaining variable.

I have a regular Timer in the 'on collision' event, but when I go to add the 'On Timer' condition in a sub-event, it doesn't show up as an option.

The blue line is where I want to add the 'On Timer' condition.

I feel like I'm missing something obvious here. I've seen 'On Timer' referenced hundreds of times online, but I can't find it in my editor. Below is all I see when I select the Human object in Conditions. The object has a Timer behaviour attached.

Hi,

I agree full with Noah, if you're pretty new to the concepts, maybe you can check out some of the video's on my youtube channel, where you can also find some examples where I use timers. A lot of them have some logic involving some kind of timer. For example falling shapes alternative or slot machine.

youtube.com/channel/UCZ6QjvqEs9dR2miRnfFqIpQ

Hope that helps in any way

cheers

Put 'On Timer' as it's own top-level event, not as a sub-event

Ok, I did that but still no joy. This is what I have now:

There are no other events impacting these two, they could effectively run on their own.

I'm wondering if because it's not a sub-event of the collision condition, it now doesn't know which tree to deduct from? If so, how would I re-link it?

To link the tree and the character you can use UIDs.

Give the character a variable called TreeUID

Then, when the character collides with the tree set TreeUID to res_Tree.UID

When the character's timer goes off use Pick Tree By UID: character.TreeUID to pick the correct tree

However, I can anticipate there being a possible problem if the character's collision box changes during it's animation. It may repeatedly collide with the res_tree as it's frame changes. Try opening the game in debug mode so you can get a better look at what the timer is doing

I was about to do that, but I decided to re-check the Debug Preview one last time. It turns out the "gatherResource" timer is being reset every tick, which I didn't notice before (I only just discovered the Watch tool!):

It tries to go up, but only ever gets to 0.1/0.2 seconds before being reset. There aren't any other interactions with that timer in the Events Sheet, except for the "On Timer" condition below it.

The parent event to that set-timer-event is just checking if the Human has a variable of job->woodcutter, in case you were wondering. No reason for any clashes.

Thanks for your help so far!

It tries to go up, but only ever gets to 0.1/0.2 seconds before being reset.

Interestingly, if you leave it for 20-30 seconds it starts working normally... Any ideas?

Chances are your animation frames are recolliding with the tree. One of the first tutorials you should have done recommends using a separate helper sprite as your main object/player, and pin the animated sprite to it. That way the collision box is fixed, and you can have any animation you want but without the side effects.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions!

blackhornet was almost there with collisions. I added a "Turn off collisions" action right after the "on collision with tree" event, and everything worked as normal. I guess it just kept colliding and restarting the timer each tick!

I then turned them back on once the character had finished collecting wood, so that they can drop it off at the storehouse.

Sorry —, I don't think I fully appreciated what you were suggesting when I read it first time, then got distracted with another issue and forgot by the time I came back to this issue :`D