The value of timed functions

Using a function that can be called at a later time can be helpful when organizing the timing of your game objects' appearance in an application. The timer library will allow us to handle our functions in a timely manner.

Timers

The timer function enables you to trigger events at a specific delay (in milliseconds) of your choosing.

• timer.performWithDelay(delay, listener [, iterations]): This invokes the listener after a delay in milliseconds and returns a handle to an object that you can pass to timer.cancel() in order to cancel the timer before it invokes the listener. For example:

  local function myEvent()
    print( "myEvent called" )
  end
  timer.performWithDelay( 1000, myEvent )

• timer.cancel(timerId): This cancels a timer operation initiated with timer.performWithDelay(). The parameter is as follows:

  • timerId: This is an object handle returned by the call to timer.performWithDelay(). For example:

    local count = 0
    
    local function myEvent()
      count = count + 1
      print...