Coroutines - tayjay/SCriPt GitHub Wiki

Coroutines are a way to run code in parallel with the main thread. This can be useful for:

• running code that takes a long time to complete
• running code that needs to wait for a certain condition to be met
• running code that needs to be executed at regular intervals

The Timing global variable provides functions for creating and managing coroutines.

CallDelayed

Call a function after a delay.

Timing:CallDelayed(5, function()
    print('This will be printed after 5 seconds')
end)

CallPeriodically

Call a function at regular intervals for a certain duration.

--duration, interval, action
Timing:CallPeriodically(60, 1, function()
    print('This will be printed every second')
end)

CallCoroutine

Call a coroutine.

Note that Lua Coroutine logic applies here. You can use coroutine.yield(x) to pause the coroutine for x seconds, 0.1 = 10 loops/second.

Timing:CallCoroutine(function()
    print('This will be printed immediately')
    while true do
        print('This will be printed every second')
        coroutine.yield(1)
    end
end)

coroutine.yield can currently only be used in CallCoroutine, if you want to use CallDelayed and have a break in it use CallCoroutine and start function with coroutine.yield(delay)

A coroutine finishes when its function returns. coroutine.yield(seconds) pauses it for that many seconds; coroutine.yield(0) (or no argument) waits a single frame.

Long-running loops are safe. If a coroutine runs too long without yielding, it is automatically pre-empted and resumed on the next frame, so a runaway loop won't hard-freeze the server (this is controlled by the CoroutineAutoYield config). You should still coroutine.yield(...) inside long loops to spread the work out — see VSR Compliance.

Using Arguments

These functions can also be called with arguments. The arguments need to be passed along in an object[].

Timing:CallDelayed(5, function(word1, word2)
    print('This will be printed after 5 seconds')
    print('The arguments are: ' .. word1 .. ' ' .. word2)
end, {'Hello',' World!'})

KillCoroutine

Executing these functions will return a CoroutineHandle object. If you store this object in your script it can be used later to kill the coroutine early.

Alias Timing:Kill

local tag = Timing:CallCoroutine(function()
    print('This will be printed immediately')
    while true do
        print('This will be printed every second')
        coroutine.yield(Timing.WaitForSeconds(1))
    end
end)
...
Timing:KillCoroutine(tag)

Note: Coroutines are stored per script, and will also be killed when the script is unloaded.