Pause mode for kind of mini game

code questions
1

Hi all,
I am currently making a game which has different types of small games, I would just say mini games for now, included.
Now it would be pretty nice to have the abillity to pause these games while playing. But honestly, I don't want to code a function for each game which then pauses each timer the game might use and breaks out of a loop and pauses/stops all the sounds, and then resumes all these timers again and idk. I just can't imagine there isn't a smarter way.
Block the thread somehow, stop the game from executing until, idk. Maybe someone with experience can help me.
thanks a lot!

2

This is a rough outline, but I'd do it somewhat like the following:

abstract class minigame {
	string name;
	timer@[] timers;
	bool paused;

	minigame(const string&in name) {
		this.name = name;
		this.paused = false;
	}

	timer@ add_timer() {
		timer t;
		timers.insert_last(t);
		return t;
	}

	void pause() {
		paused = !paused;
		if (!paused) {
			for (uint i = 0; i < timers.length(); i++) timers[i].resume();
		}
		else {
			for (uint i = 0; i < timers.length(); i++) timers[i].pause();
		}
	}

	void update() {}
}

class blackjack : minigame {
	timer@ timeout_timer; // the user will time out after 5 seconds of inactivity just for this example.

	blackjack() {
		super("Blackjack");
		@timeout_timer = add_timer();
	}

	void update() override {
		if (paused) return;
		if (timeout_timer.elapsed >= 5000) time_out();
	}

	void time_out() {
		alert("Oops", "You ran out of time");
	}
}

I unfortunately have to go do something in just a couple minutes so this was written in a notepad window and not tested, but it should give you a general idea. Happy to answer any questions you may have about this, design patterns like this are one of my favorite things about making games.

1 Like
3

Hi,

The trick here is to use arrays of timers and sounds, then to have a special new_timer() function that returns a new timer and adds it to the array of them.

This is a very minimal pseudocode example, but it might look something like:

class test {
	timer@ walk_timer = new_timer();
	timer@ jump_timer = new_timer();
	timer@[] timers;
	void pause() {
		for (uint i = 0; i < timers.length(); i++) timers[i].pause();
	}
	void resume() {
		for (uint i = 0; i < timers.length(); i++) timers[i].resume();
	}
	timer@ new_timer() {
		timer t;
		timers.insert_last(t);
		return t;
	}
}
1 Like
4

OMG I just saw this an hour after posting my reply lol! I'd started replying last night, then forgot about it. This morning I was impressed about how discourse saved drafts and decided to continue where I left off and just clicked post, then checked the topic an hour later and saw this. Oops?

5

Hey yall,
Thank you both for the examples, I'll try these solutions in the next days when I add more games and will definitly tell if I have questions :slight_smile: