Question

I am creating an android game where enemies are generated randomly and there can be multiple at once.

Is it better to create the enemies at a random time from a timer (so 5s, then 4s, then 6s… etc), or through the game loop (count to 50, create enemy, count to 64, create enemy).

If the phone the person used was slow at rendering the game loop, the timer could create too many enemies, but if it used the game loop, they would not get enemies very quickly. There appear to be pro’s and con’s for each.

Also, which is better for saving processing power so it can render images faster?

Thanks in advance

Tom

ALSO, if I used a timer for each “group” of enemies, there would be 3 timers running.

Answer 1

I recommend a combination: The engine should be driven by “ticks” that in itself don’t represent a specific duration. All engine decisions should be done based on time calculations independent of the ticks (e.g. System.currentTimeMillis subtractions). This way when there is high load on the machine you get lower frames per second but the distance of movements is not influenced. When there is lower load you get smoother graphics and movements. You should check for FPS and if they get to high you should even set the thread to sleep or you can generate more enemies. If it gets too low you can lower graphic details or prevent generation of new enemies to adapt to the situation. So I wouldn’t start timers but store times for events that you precalculate to occur in the future and check in the game loop if it is time for them to happen (not with exact comparision, of course, but eventtime < now).