Question

I’ve never actually worked with timers before but I need one for my current project.

So this might be a silly question: but what’s the ‘normal’ way to retrieve a timer for a game, and is there a better/more efficient way?

Thanks

Answer 1

Since you may want the time elapsed, and it might be so little, you might need to use the clock() function defined in time.h.

Here what I found about it in the MSDN Library:

---

Calculates the wall-clock time used by the calling process.

clock_t clock( void );

Return Value

The elapsed wall-clock time since the start of the process (elapsed time in seconds times CLOCKS_PER_SEC). If the amount of elapsed time is unavailable, the function returns –1, cast as a clock_t.

Remarks

The clock function tells how much time the calling process has used. A timer tick is approximately equal to 1/CLOCKS_PER_SEC second. In versions of Microsoft C before 6.0, the CLOCKS_PER_SEC constant was called CLK_TCK.

Example:
// crt_clock.c
// This example prompts for how long
// the program is to run and then continuously
// displays the elapsed time for that period.
//

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <time.h>

void sleep( clock_t wait );

int main( void )
{
   long    i = 6000000L;
   clock_t start, finish;
   double  duration;

   // Delay for a specified time.
   printf( "Delay for three seconds\n" );
   sleep( (clock_t)3 * CLOCKS_PER_SEC );
   printf( "Done!\n" );

   // Measure the duration of an event.
   printf( "Time to do %ld empty loops is ", i );
   start = clock();
   while( i-- ) 
      ;
   finish = clock();
   duration = (double)(finish - start) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
   printf( "%2.1f seconds\n", duration );
}

// Pauses for a specified number of milliseconds.
void sleep( clock_t wait )
{
   clock_t goal;
   goal = wait + clock();
   while( goal > clock() )
      ;
}

Output

Delay for three seconds
Done!
Time to do 6000000 empty loops is 0.1 seconds