Is timer.scheduleFunction working in 1.5.4 stable?

[609_Relentov]

I'm using timer.scheduleFunction in DCS 1.5.4 stable, but it doesn't seem to be working beyond the first call.. in other words, it's calling the function once after the delay (e.g. 5 seconds), but never again.

 

For example, a code snippet used in a "ONCE" trigger, using "TIME MORE (2)", in a DO SCRIPT (and tried it in a DO SCRIPT FILE, same result):

 

local function testFunction(time)
...
trigger.action.outText("sample text", 20)
...
return time + 5
end

do 
timer.scheduleFunction(testFunction, nil, timer.getTime() + 5)
end

 

When I load the mission, the outText output is shown after 5 seconds, but never again, so it appears the function is not being called every 5 seconds. Is there something I'm missing?

 

Thanks

[Grimes]

You are only telling it to run once. The timer.scheduleFunction() must be run each time you want to schedule a new function to run again. It doesn't auto reschedule like the mist function can.

 

local function testFunction()

trigger.action.outText("sampleText", 20)

timer.scheduleFunction(testFunction, nil, timer.getTime() + 5)

return end

 

testFunction()

[609_Relentov]

Ah, I didn't realize it didn't reschedule :). Oops - thanks for the head's up Grimes. I thought the timer version rescheduled like your Mist function

[Grimes]

There is a reason Speed wrote the mist version the way he did. Also that its mostly ported from slmod anyways. ^_^

[609_Relentov]

Interestingly (not sure if it's supposed to work this way), I found an example where it seemed they were using timer.scheduleFunction to repeatedly call a function (as opposed to just once) and all they had different was an extra unused parameter in the to-be-called function:

 

local function testFunction([color="Red"]arg[/color], time)
...
trigger.action.outText("sample text", 20)
...
return time + 5
end

do 
timer.scheduleFunction(testFunction, nil, timer.getTime() + 5)
end

 

When I added this extra parameter, the timer.scheduleFunction started repeatedly calling the function every 5 seconds (got the repeated outText messages) when I tested it offline (i.e. as a mission, not via multiplayer).

[SNAFU]

Same as 609_Relentov, I always use this kind of structure to repeat functions and that works well:

 

function repeatedfunction()
--[[
content
--]]
return timer.getTime() + 10
end	
timer.scheduleFunction(repeatedfunction, nil, timer.getTime() + 3)

 

Did I miss something?

[nomdeplume]

Did I miss something?

Nope, you're doing it right. You definitely don't need to call timer.scheduleFunction() every time within your scheduled function, the return value will re-schedule it automatically (or not, if you return nil).

 

The OP's issue is they only had the one parameter:

 

local function testFunction(time)

but the timer function calls it with two: func(uservalue, time).

 

The user value being passed to the function was nil, so their return value:

return time + 5

was becoming

return nil + 5

which won't work; so the function is never called again.

[609_Relentov]

Thanks nomdeplume, it makes sense now, I think I just missed that in the prototype for timer.scheduleFunction it's expecting two parameters in the called function. I had thought the return value was supposed to reschedule the function, thus my confusion.