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Help => General => Topic started by: UglyIgloo on September 14, 2014, 11:52:51 pm

Title: Custom sleeping function freezes the game
Post by: UglyIgloo on September 14, 2014, 11:52:51 pm

void GSleep
{
        sf::Clock clock;
        sf::Time time = sf::seconds(0);

        while(x > time)
        {
                time = clock.getElapsedTime();
        }
}

This function was created to make the game wait for a certain amount of time before carrying out the next order. Unfortunately, this causes the entire game to freeze until it is done waiting. I only want it to prevent the next line of code from happening until it is done. Thanks.

Title: Re: Custom sleeping function freezes the game
Post by: zsbzsb on September 15, 2014, 12:01:16 am

What else would you expect to happen? When you utilize 100% of 1 cpu core with your only thread how do you expect anything else to happen? And no, this is not a recommendation to start with multithreading. Instead redesign your code and don't expect blocking execution with a loop to not stop the rest of your program.

On a side note: The proper way to pause execution and let the system utilize the cpu for something else is by sleeping your thread.

Title: Re: Custom sleeping function freezes the game
Post by: UglyIgloo on September 15, 2014, 12:32:46 am

How would I utilize less of the CPU?

Quote

The proper way to pause execution and let the system utilize the cpu for something else is by sleeping your thread.

Not entirely sure what you mean by that. I can only guess you're suggesting I use windows.h's "Sleep" function, which yields the same results.

Title: Re: Custom sleeping function freezes the game
Post by: Jesper Juhl on September 15, 2014, 07:48:20 am

It yields the same result from the point og view of your program, but it does not consume 100% CPU.
To achieve what you want you'll need to redesign your code, to not depend on sleeping, as already said.
There are several ways to do what you want. One way would keep track of the time that has passed and then only call the delayed function when enough time has elapsed, then reset the time counter.

Title: Re: Custom sleeping function freezes the game
Post by: Tank on September 15, 2014, 08:35:55 am

The difference is that the sleep function tells the operating system that you don't need to do anything for a given period of time, so that the OS does not dedicate processing time to your program until the sleep is complete.

It's also called the idle state of a process.