DelayCommand(float, action)

Delays an assigned action for a period of time.

void DelayCommand(
    float fSeconds,
    action aActionToDelay
);

Parameters

fSeconds

Number of seconds to delay the command by.

aActionToDelay

Action in the Action Queue to delay.

Description

Delay aActionToDelay by fSeconds. If an error occurs the log file will contain "DelayCommand failed.".

DelayCommand() is paused/inactive when EffectTimeStop is in effect.

Remarks

DelayCommand() is no longer capped by a time limit of 1 game day.

Invalid objects can't execute stuff inside DelayCommands, meaning that DelayCommand should not be used in OnDeath events, or after a call to DestroyObject(OBJECT_SELF);

Note that, though it takes an "action" type as a parameter, nwscript doesn't allow you to do stuff like:
action aDo=SendMessageToPC(oPC, "Message");
You need to put the actual SendMessage... (or whatever) inside the DelayCommand call - you can't use the action keyword as a pointer to a function. In fact, the action keyword is unusable, except that BioWare can put it in function declarations, apparently. But we can't use it in function declarations ourselves.

Also, please note that the delay starts when the function containing the call to DelayCommand finishes.

So even no delay at all:

DelayCommand(0.0f,ActionToDo());

will postphone the execution of 'ActionToDo()' until after everything else in the same function has finished.

As of HotU, DelayCommand()'s order, if used with the same delay, has been swapped for performance reasons. A script with:

DelayCommand(10.0, Foobar());
DelayCommand(10.0, Nothing());

Will now call Nothing() before Foobar(). This is unlikly to affect anything and it is much better to put both Foobar() and Nothing() in a wrapper as noted in Known Bugs and the Code below.

Known Bugs

DelayCommand can now be used in area transitions without losing the command.

Also note that using DelayCommand on consecutive lines with the same amount of delay may produce unexpected results as of the HOTU release. Your code is less likely to break and will be more efficient if you place the sequence of actions in a seperate function and then delay the call to that function. See code example below.

Version

1.62

Example

//The old way of doing it
void main()
{
    //Make the NPC "NW_BOY" do something with the item "NW_PICKUP"
    object oNPC = GetObjectByTag("NW_BOY");
    object oPickObj = GetObjectByTag("NW_PICKUP");

    //Tell anyone nearby that they are leaving
    DelayCommand(3.0f,AssignCommand(oNPC, SpeakString("I'm going.", TALKVOLUME_TALK)));
    //Walk over to oPickObj and pick it up
    DelayCommand(3.0f,AssignCommand(oNPC, ActionPickUpItem(oPickObj)));
    //Destroy NPC
    DelayCommand(3.0f,AssignCommand(oNPC, ActionDoCommand(DestroyObject(oNPC))));
}


//The new way of doing it
void DoIt(object oNPC, object oPickObj)
{
    //Tell anyone nearby that they are leaving
    AssignCommand(oNPC, SpeakString("I'm going.", TALKVOLUME_TALK));
    //Walk over to oPickObj and pick it up
    AssignCommand(oNPC, ActionPickUpItem(oPickObj));
    //Destroy NPC
    AssignCommand(oNPC, ActionDoCommand(DestroyObject(oNPC)));
}

void main()
{
    //Make the NPC "NW_BOY" do something with the item "NW_PICKUP"
    DelayCommand(3.0f,DoIt(GetObjectByTag("NW_BOY"), GetObjectByTag("NW_PICKUP")));
}

functions:	ActionWait \| ClearAllActions \| EffectTimeStop
categories:	Action on Object Functions \| Time Functions