Displaying text on screen for a specific time?

[bansama]

Sorry for another question which probably has a dead easy answer, but we have to learn somewhere right?

 

I'm trying to display text on screen for a specific time. Basically, when I "use" an object, I want to display related text for a seconds. I was hoping some kind of while loop to count down the specified amount of time would work, but it had less than desirable results. FPS drops, text not displaying, etc. Any suggestions on what I should be doing?

 

function Script:Use(context)
self.Used = "1"
end

function Script:PostRender(context)
if self.Used == "1" then
local font = Font:Load("Fonts/arial.ttf", 12)
App.context:SetFont(font)
if self.ObjectDescription ~="" then
local DisplayTime = 0
while DisplayTime < self.DisplayTimeMax do
App.context:SetBlendMode(Blend.Alpha)
context:DrawText(self.ObjectDescription, 102, 22)
App.context:SetBlendMode(Blend.Solid)
DisplayTime = DisplayTime + 1
end
end
self.Used = "0"
end
end

[Xmlspy]

You could try using Time:GetCurrent() to deal with the specific amount of time. By the way, does pressing F11 drop your FPS that much?

 

Setup:

Script.timeStartandDuration = 0
Script.displayEnabled = false

 

Use this when you want to begin the timer:

self.timeStartandDuration = Time:GetCurrent() + 5000	-- 5 seconds in this case
self.displayEnabled = true

 

Use this where you update:

if self.displayEnabled == true then
 if self.timeStartandDuration > Time:GetCurrent() then
	 -- Draw stuff code here
 else
	 self.displayEnabled = false
 end
end

 

I'm sure you can be far more elegant than me on the names of the variables. Hope that helps.

[bansama]

You could try using Time:GetCurrent() to deal with the specific amount of time. By the way, does pressing F11 drop your FPS that much?

 

Thanks! I had looked at Time: but hadn't realised I could use it that way. Silly really, as I used to use similar in PHP years ago (I'm very rusty with coding). But thanks to your help, I now have something to work with!

 

Pressing F11 itself doesn't drop frame rate no, but the default set up in App.lua has any rendering toggled off with F11. I did try to create a new window, etc., to render text to, but that never worked with either Assert failed crashes or other errors. I've since added a section after the F11 toggle which seems to help. So the relevant section in App.lua now looks like this:

 

 --Render statistics
self.context:SetBlendMode(Blend.Alpha)
if DEBUG then
self.context:SetColor(1,0,0,1)
self.context:DrawText("Debug Mode",2,2)
self.context:SetColor(1,1,1,1)
self.context:DrawStats(2,22)
self.context:SetBlendMode(Blend.Solid)
else
--Toggle statistics on and off
if (self.window:KeyHit(Key.F11)) then self.showstats = not self.showstats end
if self.showstats then
self.context:SetColor(1,1,1,1)
self.context:DrawText("FPS: "..Math:Round(Time:UPS()),2,2)
end
-- Allows text to be rendered when FPS is toggled off
self.context:SetColor(1,1,1,1)
self.context:DrawText("", 0, 0)
end

 

I do get frame rate drops, but only when outputting with System:Print() which I use from time to time to help with debugging. And that was the cause of my FPS drops I think with the While loop I was testing.