How to set a timeout for Input

Question

If you wait out the 4 seconds it says "You ran out of time" which is good. But then, to keep the loop going, you will have to press the enter key to continue.

I want so that when it prints "You ran out of time" underneath instead of just typing, that it displays an input statement like "Type 'attack' to keep going" and the loop would continue from where it was.

from threading import Timer
import time

monsterhp = int(800)
y = 150
while monsterhp > 0:
    timeout = 4
    t = Timer(timeout, print, ['You ran out of time.'])
    t.start()
    print(" ")
    prompt = "You have %d seconds Type 'attack' to hit the monster\nType here: " % timeout
    answer = input(prompt)
    t.cancel()

    if answer == "attack":
        print("You strike the monster")
        time.sleep(1)
        monsterhp = monsterhp - y
        print("War Lord Health:", monsterhp)

Answer 1

Doing the task you proposed isn't as easy as you might've guessed. It is easier to use the signal module to do this: (I have incorporated your code with a modified version of the answer I linked)

import signal, time

def TimedInput(prompt='', timeout=20, timeoutmsg = None):
    def timeout_error(*_):
        raise TimeoutError
    signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, timeout_error)
    signal.alarm(timeout)
    try:
        answer = input(prompt)
        signal.alarm(0)
        return answer
    except TimeoutError:   
        if timeoutmsg:
            print(timeoutmsg)
        signal.signal(signal.SIGALRM, signal.SIG_IGN)
        return None

monsterhp = int(800)
y = 150
while monsterhp > 0:
    timeout = 4
    timeoutmsg = 'You ran out of time.'
    print(" ")
    prompt = "You have %d seconds Type 'attack' to hit the monster\nType here: " % timeout
    answer = TimedInput(prompt, timeout, timeoutmsg)

    if answer == "attack":
        print("You strike the monster")
        time.sleep(1)
        monsterhp = monsterhp - y
        print("War Lord Health:", monsterhp)

Note: this will only work on all unix/mac system

You can change your while loop to this, for a improved version of your code:)

while monsterhp > 0:
        timeout = 4
        timeoutmsg = 'You ran out of time.'
        print(" ")
        prompt = "You have %d seconds Type 'attack' to hit the monster\nType here: " % timeout
        answer = TimedInput(prompt, timeout, timeoutmsg)

        if answer == "attack":
            print("You strike the monster")
            time.sleep(1)
            monsterhp = monsterhp - y
            print("War Lord Health:", monsterhp)
        elif answer == None:
            print("The War Lord has killed you, you're now dead")
            print("Thanks for playing, \nGAME OVER")
            break