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Question by Ubahs · Apr 15, 2013 at 07:19 AM · best practicestimespan

Best Practices: TimeSpans

Hi there, this is, hopefully, a simple question. Why do I not see TimeSpans in tutorials/examples more? Are using these considered a bad practice? I know all sorts of nifty things can be done with just plain ol' floats and Time.deltaTime, but very little seems to fit the elegance (in my opinion) of something like:

 timeInAir += TimeSpan.FromSeconds(Time.deltaTime);

I'm still new to Unity, but I'm afraid of building bad habits now if I should be staying away from TimeSpans/DateTimes. Are these just not used a lot because not everyone comes from a C# background and is used to these futuristic objects?

Specifically, I'm wondering if:

  1. Are they performant (across all platforms)?

  2. Do they work across all platforms?

  3. Do they ever not work the way they should (from MS C# background) in Unity's custom .net compiler setup?

Sorry if this isn't considered constructive, but I think Best Practices are rather important to nail down early.

Thanks.

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Answer by whydoidoit · Apr 15, 2013 at 08:55 AM

Um: timeInAir += Time.deltaTime - would give you the total time in the air in seconds!

I use TimeSpans but only when comparing or incrementing actual DateTime constructs.

They work on all platforms.

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avatar image Ubahs · Apr 15, 2013 at 09:14 AM 0
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That wasn't the complete code! But,

 TimeSpan timeInAir += TimeSpan.FromSeconds(Time.deltaTime); 

doesn't make sense. And, well, doesn't actually compile either. It was an example of it, to me, making a little more sense than treating floats as time.

 TimeSpan timeInAir; // private member
 timeInAir += TimeSpan.FromSeconds(Time.deltaTime); // In update

(there...)

So, no reason not to use TimeSpans - just a lot of people don't?

avatar image whydoidoit · Apr 15, 2013 at 11:22 AM 0
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Well they are slower than using floats - which are perfect for representing time in seconds within a game context. You can use TimeSpans if you like :)

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