Timer Actions (FXGL 11)

In games you often want to run an action after some period of time or at some interval. For example, you can use the following to schedule some action to run only once after 1 second. The action will run on the JavaFX Thread.

getGameTimer().runOnceAfter(() -> {
    // code to run once after 1 second
}, Duration.seconds(1));

Note the above is equivalent to FXGL DSL:

import static com.almasb.fxgl.dsl.FXGL.*;

runOnce(() -> {
    // code to run once after 1 second
}, Duration.seconds(1))

Similar DSL functions are available for other timer actions. If you want something to run constantly, you can use:

getGameTimer().runAtInterval(() -> {
    // code to run every 300 ms
}, Duration.millis(300));

Note that these actions are controlled by the GAME state timer, which means if your game is paused then the timer is also paused. Each state (GAME_MENU, MAIN_MENU, etc) has its own timer, so you can choose the one you want.

Once you schedule an action, the reference to that action is returned.

TimerAction timerAction = getGameTimer().runAtInterval(() -> {
    // ...
}, Duration.seconds(0.5));

You can pause and resume a timer action when needed.

timerAction.pause();
timerAction.resume();

Finally, if you no longer need the action, you can expire it.

timerAction.expire();