Is it possible to simulate a pause in a game for a fake exhaustive task?

Wednesday, August 8, 2012 by Nate Bross

Someone asked on Game Development:

Having windows phone OS 7.1 and it is for better understanding the game pipeline.

Game.IsFixedTimeStep = true and TargetElapsedTime is 60

The idea was to start a new thread and use Thread.Sleep()

protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime)
{
    Sleep();

   base.Update(gameTime);
}

bool m_bSleepRunning;
void Sleep()
{
   m_bSleepRunning = true;
   new System.Threading.Thread(
     () => 
               { 
                    Thread.Sleep(2000);
                    m_bSleepRunning =false;
               ;}
     ).Start();
   while(m_bSleepRunning)
   {
      //empty cycle
   }
}

While debug there is a pause for every update, but the property gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds is not updated.

I posted the following answer, which was chosen as the accepted answer and received 4 upvotes:

By calling Thread.Sleep() inside of a new thread the main thread will not sleep and your Update method is not blocked. To achieve the question you asked give this a shot:

protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) 
{ 
    System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(2000);
    base.Update(gameTime); 
}

If, on the other hand, your objective is to only update something every so often, try something like this:

float elapsedTime = 0f;
protected override void Update(GameTime gameTime) 
{ 
    elapsedTime += gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalMilliseconds;

    if(elapsedTime >= 2000)
    {
        elapsedTime = 0;
        // run the code you want to happen every so often here
    }

    base.Update(gameTime); 
}

The first code block will bring your entire game to a grinding halt for two seconds, this may be what you are trying to do. The second code block will keep your game running, but allow you to execute some code only every two seconds.

Originally posted on Game Development — 4 upvotes (accepted answer). Licensed under CC BY-SA.