Timer behavior

The Timer behavior triggers its On timer condition regularly or once after a delay. This is like using the system Every X seconds condition, or the system Wait action, except that times are kept for each instance individually. The rate of On timer triggering is affected by the time scale. The timer behavior is a more convenient alternative to adding dt to an instance variable every tick.

Scripting

When using JavaScript or TypeScript coding, the features of this behavior can be accessed via the ITimerBehaviorInstance script interface.

Tags

A single Timer behavior can keep track of multiple timers. To distinguish between them, a tag is used. A tag is just a string, which can be anything. For example, starting a timer with tag "attack" will trigger On timer "attack", but not On timer "defend".

When a timer is stopped, or after a one-off timer triggers, it no longer exists and the timer expressions cannot be used to retrieve any information about it.

Timer conditions

Is timer paused
True if a timer with the given tag has been started and then subsequently paused with the Pause/resume timer action.
Is timer running
True if a timer with the given tag has been started with the Start timer action. Once Stop timer is used, the timer no longer counts as running. Paused timers also count as running - use the Is timer paused condition to identify these timers separately.
On timer
Triggers either regularly, or once off, after a timer that was started with the same tag has reached its duration.

Timer actions

Pause/resume timer
Set a currently running timer (started with the Start timer action) either paused or resumed. When a timer is paused, it will stop triggering On timer. When resumed, it will continue triggering On timer, resuming from the time that it was paused at. In other words if a timer is set for 1 second, it is paused after 0.5 seconds, and then after some time it is resumed again, On timer will trigger 0.5 seconds after resuming.
Start timer
Set a new timer, or if the timer exists, re-start it with new options. Duration is the time until On timer triggers. If Type is Once, then On timer will fire once and not again until Start timer is used again; if Regular, then On timer will keep firing every Duration seconds. The tag allows multiple timers to run at once. The corresponding On timer condition must use the same tag.
Stop timer
Stop a timer with a specific tag. On timer will no longer trigger with the given tag after this action.
Stop all timers
Stop all currently running timers regardless of their tags. On timer will no longer trigger for any timer after this action unless a new timer is started.

Timer expressions

CurrentTime(tag)
The time in seconds since On timer last triggered, for a timer with a specific tag.
Duration(tag)
The duration in seconds for a timer with a specific tag.
TotalTime(tag)
The time in seconds since a timer with a specific tag was started with the Start timer action. This is only useful with regular timers, since it will always equal the CurrentTime expression for one-off timers (after which they fire and the timer no longer exists, so these expressions return 0).
Construct 3 Manual 2024-02-16