Making a countdown time readout in Godot 4.1

Timers are a common sight in games nowadays and an important part of many games. In Godot, we use nodes to represent features, and in order to create a timer, we use the timer nodes. So, let us look at the timer nodes in a bit of detail.

Timer node

The timer node is a built-in feature in Godot that counts down a specified interval and emits a signal on reaching 0. This node has certain properties and methods that make it a flexible feature and effective in game development.

Properties and methods

The following image shows the properties and methods that are in the timer node:

Let us look at the following properties and methods in a bit more detail:

autostart: This is a boolean property, which, if true, automatically starts the timer as the scene starts.
one_shot: This is a boolean property, which, if true, will stop the timer after playing it once. If it is false, then it will restart.
paused: This is a boolean property, which, if true, will pause the timer. The timer will not process until it is unpaused again.
time_left: This is a float property, which stores the remaining time in seconds. It will return 0 if the timer is inactive.
wait_time: This is a float property, which sets the wait time in seconds. By default, the value is 1.0.
start: This is a method which has a float time_sec as a parameter. This parameter starts the timer from the time provided.

Note: The start method will not resume a paused timer.

stop: This is a method that stops the timer.
timeout: This is a signal which is used to trigger the on_timeout function. This signal is sent when the timer reaches 0.

Implementation

To make a resettable timeout reader in Godot, we used the following nodes:

Timer: This node is used to implement the countdown timer. In the Godot inspector, we check the autostart and one_shot property.
TextureButton: This node is used to implement the resettable button, which resets the timer.
Labels: They are used to show textual information.

Following is the script that we attach to our main object:

#default parent class for objects in Godot
extends Node2D
#This function is called every frame of the game, when it is running
func _process(delta):
    #This sets the text of the timer countdown label
	$TimerCountdown.text = "%s" % roundf($Timer.time_left)
#signal function which is called when timer timeouts
func _on_timer_timeout():
    #Changes the text of message underneath the button
	$Message.text = "Timer ran out"
#This is a signal function, which is triggered when the button is clicked
func _on_texture_button_pressed():
    #Restarts timer and updates the message label
	$Timer.start(10)
	$Message.text = "Timer resetted"

Code explanation

Let us look at the explanation for the code snippet above:

Line 2: The Node2D is the default parent class in Godot for every 2D node.
Lines 4–6: In _process(delta) function, we are using the Timer node’s text property, which we have named TimerCountdown, and we will update it accordingly with each frame.
Lines 8–10: The _on_timer_timeout() is a signal function in Godot that is triggered when the timer node timeouts. After timing out, it will change the initial message from “Timer started” to “Timer ran out.”
Lines 12–15: The _on_texture_button_pressed() is also a signal function in Godot, which is triggered when we click the Reset button in the game. This resets the timer node and gives an updated message.

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