Timing is making things happen when you want them to.

Units of Time

Most modern timing functions use milliseconds¹ as their unit of measurement.

A loopin is the amount of time that your game takes to execute one game loop.

Intervals

An interval is the time between one moment and another. The term interval usually implies a repeating interval accomplished by looping an alarm by having it reset itself. Intervals can be regular or random.

Regular intervals happen at evenly spaced moments. Random intervals are random.

Timers

A regular timer measures time from the moment it was started. A countdown timer starts by being set to an amount of time and then counts down.

Countdown Timer

A countdown timer / alarm counts down the time to 0. Then something happens. A bomb goes off, the game is over, etc.

Set timer to amount of time to count down

Every game loop
    If the timer is not equal to 0 Then
        Subtract 1 from the timer
    Else
        Alarm goes off

System Clocks

A Jiffy is one-sixtieth of a second. It was a unit of measurement for time for the Commodore PET system clock.

Related Pages

• Delay Loop
• Game Loop
• Game Programming
• Millisecond
• Loopin
• Second
• Time

Links

• Timing at the Game Maker Wiki