GUI Text counter Skips numbers after a few seconds

Question

The counter counts perfectly up until the first bump. After this it starts to add about 4-5 "points" instead of just 1.

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class GameController : MonoBehaviour
{

    public GUIText scoreText;
    public int score;

// CONVERT FLOAT TO INT?


    void Start (){
    score = 0;
    StartCoroutine (FeetScoreCounter());
    }

    // STARTS COUNTING AFTER WAITFORSECONDS
    IEnumerator FeetScoreCounter() {
    yield return new WaitForSeconds (1);
    InvokeRepeating("scoreCounter", 2, 1);
}

// FOR EACH 5 SECONDS; score++ ???

    void Update () {
    scoreText.text = score + " ft";
 //     StartCoroutine (FeetScoreCounter());

}

void scoreCounter () {
    score += 1;
    StartCoroutine (FeetScoreCounter());
    score ++;
}

}

I want my counter to start counting when the game starts, to show how far up the balloon is. I am incapable of seeing why my code just randomly adds a whole lot more over time. Care to help?

Answer 1

It looks like you have your score working using Time.time as the counter.

I thought it may be helpful to explain what was happening when the code in your question is executed.

1. When game starts and the Start() method runs it calls StartCoroutine (FeetScoreCounter())
2. When FeetScoreCounter() runs it immediately yields for one second, then after that delay it calls InvokeRepeating("scoreCounter", 2, 1). This will cause scoreCounter() to run repeatedly starting after a two second delay, and then again every second.
3. When scoreCounter() runs it: A) increments score, B) calls FeetScoreCounter() (see step 2) , and then C) increments score again.

The first time InvokeRepeating("scoreCounter", 2, 1) is executed it causes scorecounter() to run in a repeating manner: wait couple of seconds then once per second until canceled.

Each subsequent call of InvokeRepeating("scoreCounter", 2, 1) has the same effect, but the earlier ones are never canceled.

Each time scoreCounter() runs it calls FeetScoreCounter() (and InvokeRepeating()) triggering an additional call of scoreCounter() to occur each second from then on.

As a result you quickly have many parallel InvokeRepeating() requests each calling scoreCounter() on a regular schedule. This will cause the score to increase at an exponential rate.

---

An alternative implementation might look like this:

public class GameController : MonoBehaviour {

    public GUIText scoreText;
    public int score;
    public int delay = 2;
    public int frequency = 1;

    void Start () {
        score = 0;
        InvokeRepeating("scoreCounter", delay, frequency);
    }

    void scoreCounter () {
        score++;
        scoreText.text = score + " ft";
    }

}

Answer 2

This was the correct solution, where it converts score (float) to an integer.