I want to implement a timer for a game java?

Question

I want to have a method startTimer(30) where the parameter is the amount of seconds to countdown. How do I do so in Java?

Answer 1

java.util.Timer is not a bad choice, but javax.swing.Timer may be more convenient, as seen in this example.

Answer 2

The Java 5 way of doing this would be something like:

void startTimer(int delaySeconds) {
  Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor().schedule(
    runnable,
    delaySeconds,
    TimeUnit.SECONDS);
}

The runnable describes what you want to do. For example:

Runnable runnable = new Runnable() {
  @Override public void run() {
    System.out.println("Hello, world!");
  }
}