I'm making a TextBox control in XNA and do not have access to the GameTime class. Currently I am trying to simulate the blinking text cursor caret and have successfully done so using this code:
int deltaTickCount = Environment.TickCount - previousTickCount;
if (deltaTickCount < CursorBlinkRate && Selected)
{
spriteBatch.Draw(emptyPixel, new Rectangle(caretLocation, Rectangle.Y + 1, caretWidth, caretHeight), Color.Black);
}
else if (deltaTickCount > CursorBlinkRate * 2)
{
previousTickCount = Environment.TickCount;
}
However, I'm a bit wary of using Environment.TickCount. If the computer was running long enough, wouldn't the program eventually crash or produce unpredictable behavior when the tick count exceeded its integral size?
Does anyone know what Windows does? I imagine it would use the system clock. Would that be a more suitable solution? I imagine they used something like total milliseconds in to the second instead of the tick count, but I'm not sure.
Thanks for reading.
I generally use the system diagnostics timer in a lot of situations.
It's a pretty powerful tool which creates a timer for you with a lot of good controls.
using System.Diagnostics;
Stopwatch timer = new Stopwatch();
Then use inbuilt controls:
timer.Start();
if(timer.elapsedMilliseconds() > ...)
{ }
timer.Reset();
etc...
This would allow you to reset the timer?
When Evnironment.TickCount rolls over, deltaTickCount will end up being negative, so you know it has happened. The calculation then becomes:
if (deltaTickCount < 0)
deltaTickCount = int.MaxValue - previousTickCount + Environment.TickCount;
Without bothering with what would happen in the case of an integer overflow, simply change to:
int deltaTickCount =
Environment.TickCount > previousTickCount
? Environment.TickCount - previousTickCount
: CursorBlinkRate * 3;
Related
I'm using a stopwatch to know how long some operations run for points (game) system.
I'm defining it like this:
Stopwatch sekunde = new Stopwatch();
long tocke;
long glavnetocke;
long cas;
tocke and glavnetocke are points.
Then in "construct" I need to do this:
sekunde.Start();
Thread.Sleep(10000);
sekunde.Stop();
If I don't do Thread sleep for 10000 it won't work.
Later in event handlers I use it like this:
sekunde.Start();
viewer.Clear();
viewer.DrawBody(body, 10.0, Brushes.Green, 10.0, Brushes.Green);
sekunde.Stop();
cas = (long)sekunde.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
tocke = tocke + ((cas / 10));
if (tocke > 200)
{
glavnetocke = glavnetocke + 1;
tocke = 0;
}
viewer is to draw body of the person standing in front of a camera.
If I leave thread.sleep to 10000 it will work, otherwise it will not. But I need this to go away, because it stops the whole program. Even thou it happens only after I press a button in my form, I need to wait 10sec, before starting. Was thinking of just adding loading screen, but it doesn't work, as it freezes the whole program, so it doesn't show the loading gif.
EDIT:
well, as you can see that "tocke = tocke +((cas / 10));
tocke is always 0 if I remove thread.sleep or even lower the sleep number. Does stopwatch need time to initialize or something?
I want to get time of how long the operation runs to a long type variable so I can then use it for ingame points calculating. (cas = (long)sekunde.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;)
By casting TotalSeconds as a long you are chopping off the fraction part. I've redone your example using doubles and it seems to work for me:
Stopwatch sekunde = new Stopwatch();
long glavnetocke = 0;
double cas;
double tocke = 0;
sekunde.Start();
sekunde.Stop();
cas = sekunde.Elapsed.TotalSeconds;
tocke = tocke + ((cas / 10));
if (tocke > 200)
{
glavnetocke = glavnetocke + 1;
tocke = 0;
}
Result
cas = 0.0000015 (on my setup)
I'm creating a console game as simple as "I generate a random number, find it", but with many options.
My current code (without what I want here) is availlable on GitHub: https://github.com/crakmaniaque/trouvezmoi
What I want is to create a version of my game which will be timed, so the computer generates numbers, the user finds it, it generates a new one and the player have 90 seconds to find a max lot of random numbers. I can code this easily.
What I will need help is to stop the game (a thread) after 90 seconds and retrieve the number of answers founded from the thread. The Console.Title should also show time remaining. The attempt I've tried works, but the thread is not interrupted if console is asking for number input (Console.ReadLine()). But the timer is for the entire process, not only user input.
private static void timerb()
{
int t = 90;
for (int i = 0; i < 90; i++)
{
Console.Title = t + " seconds remaining";
Thread.Sleep(1000);
t--;
}
}
private static void cGame()
{
Thread t = new Thread(timerb);
t.Start();
while (t.IsAlive)
{
bool good = false;
int rnd = new Random().Next(0,10); // 0 and 10 are sample
while (!good)
{
try
{
Console.Write("Enter a number between x and y >");
int i = int.Parse(Console.ReadLine());
if (i == rnd)
{
good = true;
}
}
catch (FormatException)
{
Console.WriteLine("Invalid answer.");
}
}
}
}
I don't know much about threading and at that point I'm stuck.
Can someone help me with my problem? I'm using .NET 2.0.
Perhaps you are looking for a timer? You could register an event, that would fire after 90 seconds, that would run while the loop is happening. The documentation can be found here: Timer class MSDN documentation.
I believe the usage would be:
Timer timer = new Timer { Interval = new Timespan (0,1,30);
timer.elapsed += //function to fire to kill the app or the game
You'd need to make each console read with a timeout equal to the amount of time left in the game. That solves that issue.
Then, you need a way to signal the timerb thread to shut down when the main game loop has ended. I think the simplest way would be to end the game loop when the remaining time is <= zero. Alternatively, you could make timerb singnal the main thread to shut down when t == 0. Inter-thread communication is always complicated and error-prone, though.
You can signal the timerb thread to shut down by setting a volatile bool shutdown to true and by making timerb poll that variable and shut itself down.
I am wondering how I can make a decreasing counter to replace a timer, as in the timer would start at 3, and decrease every second, until reaching zero, where it would preform an action. Any Help?
// Change Image from "Hut" to Mole \\
private void ChangeImage()
{
Image newImage = HoleImage();
molePopup = MoleImage();
int numCol = Convert.ToInt32(NumberOfColumns);
//Random Number - Col
Random randomColumns = new Random();
int ranCol = randomColumns.Next(1, numCol);
//Random Number - Row
Random randomRow = new Random();
int ranRow = randomRow.Next(1, NumberofRows);
string Moleimage = TUtils.GetIniFileString(Moleini, "ImagePath", "PictureFile", Root + "mole2.png");
//Populate Grid with Mole at Random Times \\
Grid.SetRow(molePopup, ranRow);
Grid.SetColumn(molePopup, ranCol);
grid_Main.Children.Add(molePopup);
molePopup.MouseUp += new MouseButtonEventHandler((o, e) =>
{
MolePoints++;
grid_Main.Children.Remove(molePopup);
});
}
I may be unclear, but as long as you only have the one thread in the program (and nothing going on otherwise), you'd use something like this:
for(int i = 3; i > 0; i--)
{
Thread.Sleep(1000);
}
doWhatever();
For each iteration of the loop, you "sleep" the thread 1000 milliseconds, or 1 second. To do this, you will need to include System.Threading with using System.Threading. If you're doing something in the background, use alternate methods instead of Sleep, since it locks the thread execution for the duration specified.
EDIT:
This is the MSDN documentation for Thread.Sleep() method. Seems to be very similar to what you want to do, if I take your meaning correctly.
Use DispatcherTimer
Set the interval property to 1000 (= 1 second)
Create a variable that represents your countdown timer
Create a tick event in which you check if your countdown variable is zero. If it is zero => stop timer and perform action. If not => decrease variable
Start the timer
I'm trying to have a stopwatch start and stop when recording positions for the Kinect:
//process x and y coordinates
public void calculateJoints(Skeleton skeleton)
{
Joint rightHand = skeleton.Joints[JointType.HandRight];
Joint leftHand = skeleton.Joints[JointType.HandRight];
rightX = rightHand.Position.X;
rightY = rightHand.Position.Y;
}
//start the stopwatch (tried to use a greater time between positions 1 and 5 vs 1 and 2
public void processJointsAndRepeat(Skeleton skeleton)
{
startTime();
while (numPositions < 5)
{
calculateJoints(skeleton);
numPositions++;
}
stopTime();
double tempTime = calculateTimeElapsed();
}
//calculate time in milliseconds
private double calculateTimeElapsed()
{
long milliseconds = stopWatch.ElapsedMilliseconds;
return (double)milliseconds;
}
But whenever I try to put in the x, y, and time values with time as the key, it throws an error for duplicate keys. When I retrieved the value of tempTime, it only showed 0.
Is this a problem with my code, or do I need a more precise stopwatch?
I realize that getting a time for something that is 30 fps is difficult, so if you have any other suggestions, that'd be great! I'm basically just trying to calculate the average velocities between points to adjust the playback speed of an audio file. Thanks!
Stopwatch is wrapper around timer with higerst resolution on regular Windows box. You can use less fancy functions to get higer than MS resolution by using Stopwatch.ElapsedTicks and Stopwatch.Frequency.
Note that your problem is probably not related to timers but rather some other code you did not show...
I'm having problems making smooth animations in GDI+. The problem as I understand it from Googling is that there is some kind of bug with the clock-ticks in .NET on a multi-core processor. Here's a simplified version of what I'm doing:
class Animation
{
System.Diagnostics.Stopwatch sw = new Stopwatch();
float AnimationTime = 1000; //time it takes the animation to complete
public bool IsComplete
{ get { return sw.ElapsedMilliseconds > AnimationTime; } }
public void StartAnimation()
{
sw.Reset();
sw.Start();
}
public void DoFrame()
{
float PercentComplete = (float)sw.ElapsedMilliseconds / AnimationTime;
//draw the animation based on PercentComplete
}
}
DoFrame() is called like this:
Animation.Start();
do
{
Animation.DoFrame();
Application.DoEvents();
} while (!Animation.IsComplete);
The problem is that the animation is very smooth for about 15 frames then it jerks, it actually goes backward (sw.ElapsedMilliseconds gives a lesser value than the previous query). It's very annoying and it's ruining my otherwise smooth animation that looks great even on a Core 2 Duo (despite Microsoft saying this is a multicore bug). I have an i7 and the animation is smooth except for 2-3 frames per second that look "jerky".
I understand that this is a known issue and Microsoft blames it on the processor, so my question is, does anyone know any kind of solution for this? I tried using a Kalman filter and it sort of works. I was hoping maybe there is an established "correct" solution for this?
Oh b.t.w. I tried using DateTime instead of Stopwatch and got the same results.
I also tried:
double PercentComplete = (double)sw.ElapsedTicks / (double)Stopwatch.Frequency * 1000 / AnimationTime
It gives me the same results.
It probably has to do with the way you call DoFrame(). Using the following windows forms / GDI+ based algorithm you should alway get very smooth animations:
const double desiredFps = 500.0;
long ticks1 = 0;
var interval = Stopwatch.Frequency / desiredFps;
while (true)
{
Application.DoEvents();
var ticks2 = Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();
if (ticks2 >= ticks1 + interval)
{
ticks1 = Stopwatch.GetTimestamp();
// do the drawing here
}
}