Hello and welcome to another episode in the Godot basics tutorial series. In this episode we will be taking a look at timer's in game design and won't go over in detail about game design theory. However if I could summarize game design or rather if I could summarize games in general I would say that games are all about decision making oriented towards a goal. Think about any game you've played whether it's chess Call of Duty or even Ex Comm. There are two things that the game provides you. One is decision making ability. The second is oriented towards a go. Now whether that goal is to beat someone as you would in chess or work your way to saving the world such as x come well that's all going to be decided based on your game design decision. But again games in general are all about decision making. Oriented towards a go. Let's take a quick look at tic tac toe in tic tac toe you have two players. One gets to put Xs. The other gets to put circles both players have the ability to make decisions based on rules that the game provides. And on top of that there is a go and they go is to get three of your objects aligned in a row. So how exactly do timers add value to our game design. Well for one thing timers add pressure to our players decision making.

Basically by adding pressure to your player you bring out certain emotions such as stress and panic and if you compound stress and panic enough onto a player. This creates excitement. So in reality when you create stress and panic onto a player you bring excitement. Therefore your game is less boring. On top of that you also change the way your game feels to the person playing your game. Let's take a look at a maze for an example let's say I told you that your players started here and they just said get to the end of the maze and there's no timer. Well Well the feeling that this game provides is well a sense of a walk in the park. Smell the roses kind of game. There's no pressure. As a matter of fact by having no timer your player may be incentivized to check every nook and cranny of this maze. Perhaps maybe there's something worth finding over here now. But if we told that same player that no you don't have infinite amount of time to check around this means you have 30 seconds or else. Well this new rule or rather this new timer mechanic adds pressure to our player or player is not incentivized to check everything in the maze.

And as the timer counts down closer to zero. Our player feels more stressed the farther away they are from their objective their go the go being to reach the end of the maze. There are many different types of tumors we can have in our game design however let's just take a look at two. The first is the countdown timer also known as the time limit by adding a time limit to your game you are limiting how much time a player can finish a level by limiting the time. You also limit the amount of decision making ability a player has as a matter of fact. Each move is more important than the less and each move is more important the closer your timer reaches zero. However when it comes to timer's there's basically an infinite amount of possibilities. For example you could have a timer that set to one hour or you can have a timer that's set to 1 minute. However no matter which one you decide to go with or no matter your ranges the concept is the same. As time approaches closer to zero the more important your player's decisions are.

And as a matter of fact the closer your time approaches to zero the more bad decisions your player makes. The more stress that is compounded onto the player and this is why when you watch for example Twitch Streamers play a game with a timer they get more excited visibly the closer they reach the number zero and their timer while also being farther away from their goal objective. Lastly what makes a countdown timer a countdown timer is that when the timer reaches zero a penalty will be applied unto the player. One example of a countdown timer is the classical Mario game Super Mario Bros. Towards the top right you'll have your timer. Now in this game you start with 300 seconds so you have quite a lot of time to finish your level.

However when you have one minute and a half to finish the game. So basically when your timer is to 90 seconds the game changes the song to let the player know that they are running out of time and actually in this case not only does the timer add stress to the player but the music that the game decides to play. Also add stress to the player as well. If your timer in Super Mario Bros reaches zero you immediately end the game and you lose a lot. In this case that would be your penalty. The second type of timer is a speed run timer which is just basically a stopwatch. It's basically a passive timer that counts up and instead of adding stress to the player like our countdown timer does our speed run timer basically allows the player to have control over how they want to play the game. Either a player can ignore the timer and spend as much time as they want on a particular level or a player can choose to challenge themselves by trying to attempt to have the fastest possible time. A good example of a speed run timer is the original Sonic games.

When you start a level you start with your timer set to zero and it increases by one second. The more you play this level as the player you can choose to beat the level at the fastest possible time. Or you can choose to ignore the timer completely and just enjoy the game for what it is. There are other timers to keep in mind such as a refresh timer. A good example of that is League of Legends your moves such as Q W E and R basically every spell your character has has a refresh timer also referred to as a cooldown timer. You also have remainder timers for example and Final Fantasy 13. Part 3. I believe your timer was set to 72 hours and there was nothing you could do to avoid this particular countdown timer. The difference between a reminder timer and a countdown timer is there is usually a penalty with the countdown timer thus adding stress to the player whereas a reminder timer is basically politely reminding the player that some particular event is going to happen when the timer reaches zero and that there is nothing the player can do to avoid it but instead can prepare for it.

In this case and Final Fantasy 13 Part 3 The player had to stock up on items get stronger because once that timer reached zero that was going to be the time that they played against the final boss. Lastly we also have invisible timers. Basically these are timers for internal use in our games. That should not be known to the player. For example one Splinter Cell. There are enemies that when they spot you they try to search for you. They're not going to search forever for you. Internally they do have a countdown timer where they spend for example perhaps 30 seconds trying to find your main character and if they cannot find your main character in 30 seconds they just go back to their original patrol area. Well that's all I have for you in this episode. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're curious about other YouTube series based on Gordo and JD script please feel free to look into the description down below I left a link to the trailer page that should have a lot of Godot YouTube goodies. If you have any questions or comments please feel free to leave them in the comments section down below. Thank you for subscribing and thank you for clicking the Like button. I look forward to seeing you in the next episode. Have an amazing day