timing

Timing in FlatRedBall2

The engine provides FrameTime to every CustomActivity call. Use time.DeltaSeconds (a float) to drive all time-based logic — cooldowns, repeating events, and entity lifetimes.

FrameTime.SinceGameStart is a TimeSpan (use .TotalSeconds for a float). It's useful for absolute timestamps but the countdown pattern below is simpler for most cases.

Scaled vs. Unscaled Delta

FrameTime carries two per-frame deltas:

• Delta / DeltaSeconds — multiplied by Engine.Time.TimeScale. This is what you want 99% of the time. If the player triggers slow-mo by setting TimeScale = 0.5f, gameplay using DeltaSeconds slows down with it.
• UnscaledDelta / UnscaledDeltaSeconds — the raw wall-clock delta, ignoring TimeScale. Use for things that should run at real-world speed regardless of slow-mo or fast-forward: UI animations, debug overlays, screen-shake decay, anything player-facing that would feel wrong if it slowed down with the game world.

"Unscaled" means not multiplied by TimeScale. It does not mean "ignores pause" — both Delta and UnscaledDelta keep advancing while a screen is paused; the difference is purely the scale multiplication. (Pausing is handled separately — see "Pause and Entity.PauseMode" below.)

For cumulative wall-clock time across the whole game, read Engine.Time.UnscaledTimeSinceStart (a TimeSpan).

Pause and Entity.PauseMode

Screen.PauseThisScreen() suppresses entity physics, entity CustomActivity, and collision processing for the screen. Screen.CustomActivity, Gum UI, and input keep running — pause-menu logic still works.

By default, every entity is PauseMode.Pausable and freezes with the screen. To opt an individual entity out of pause suppression — e.g., a cursor entity, parallax background, or animated menu spinner that should keep ticking even while gameplay is frozen — set entity.PauseMode = PauseMode.Always; (typically in CustomInitialize). Its PhysicsUpdate and CustomActivity will run every frame regardless of Screen.IsPaused.