Threaded time event

[Mario F.]

I need a new threaded timer event system. My current solution is not working as I would like it. This is the problem...

CPlayer and CMonster fight. A new thread is launched in which time elapses. Once a certain time is reached Cmonster has to either perform an action or resort to the default action. Next is CPlayer. It then has also a few seconds to input an action or resort to the default one.

The thread responsible for the timer is too heavy for the CPU because of my rather weak system for counting time which is based on an endless loop:

// something like this
while(true) {
    if(time == threshold)
        break;
}

I need something better. I can't seem to find any info about this. Can you at least point me in the right direction for a more efficient time based counter? The system is Windows.

[l2u]

Did you consider using WaitForSingleObject?

[Mario F.]

> Did you consider using WaitForSingleObject?

Ah yes... forgot about that important piece of info... it's console based and I mean it to be portable across systems. No windows header or anything like that.

[CornedBee]

Threads aren't exactly portable, you know. Nor is there a portable of doing input with possible timeout.
What are you doing right now to achieve this goal?

[Mario F.]

I was hoping for a more lower level solution that I could use to implement without the need to use system specific headers. If the solution is using these headers then I guess I have no choice.

Threads are being developed using the boost::threads library. So, I'm not worried with that part. Console formatting is being done through NCurses, which does force some code changes between Windows, Linux (and MacOS). But not too much. So that is covered too. Seems this timer is the only thing I have for which there isn't a solution that can cover both Linux and Windows at least.

[l2u]

I think boost::mutex has something that might be useful for you.

[nr_]

A call to sleep instead of the busy look ought to work better. The boost library, at least from their documentation, has a timer mutex that, upon timing out, should release its lock. If that is the case, you wait on the lock until it times out and effectively mimick the call to sleep. Another way is to use the platform's native timer. So, basically, you send the API a callback function and the API calls your function every interval. But to make this technique work good on both windows and linux may require some work. Also, if the sleep is done on the main thread, then you'll loose all interactivity for the time period, which in most cases is not good.