Question

const float FPS = 60;
timer = al_create_timer(1.0 / FPS);

Apparently, those two lines start a timer that goes off 60 times per second.

I don’t understand that. 1/FPS gives 1/60, and docs say the parameter of al_create_timer is the number of seconds it counts per tick, so it counts 1/60 of a second per tick. So…is that to say the timer conveniently ticks 60 times per second? I’m not understanding these units.

Answer 1

The units are seconds. If you want it to go off 60 times per second, then the timer lasts 1/60th of a second. If you want it to go off 5 times per second, then you would set the length between timer firings to be 1/5 of a second.

Think of setting the time interval of the timer rather than the number of times per second (or frequency) of the timer.