Starting from here, the “How delete all clones?” topic turned more into a “pause/resume” topic. So, i'm creating a new topic for this.

Some points from the old topic:

mrsteve wrote:

Okay so here is a suggestion “Pause/Resume Button” next to the Green Flag and Stop Sign.

I was looking at the project “Day Dream“ (absolutely beautiful) and hit the ”Stop Sign“ half way through and realized I had to go back and rewatch all I already saw (which wasn't so bad).

Anyway, a ”Pause/Resume” may solve my issue while watching daydream and my issue when running a simulation.

Of course does Pause pause everything, including Events? or only currently executing scripts?
I could envision wanting to Pause my currently executing scripts, but still want to be able to:
a) capture a screenshot (various stages of the simulation preserved in my cloud data for later review, which I am not sure I can do within scratch, but would be nice in a future version )
b) data captures to the cloud at various points (of course I could do this other ways, so a non-issue)

Need to think some more …Thanks for letting me think out loud

BoltBait wrote:

If you hit the pause button, would it pause the timer?

Would it pause updating cloud variables?

Would it pause the date and time blocks?

mrsteve wrote:

he he he, In spite of all I do Time marches on, I would expect the same in Scratch.

Hardmath123 wrote:

We just copy whatever BYOB does. I would say pause everything.

What does BYOB do, BTW?

I think:

It should pause all currently running scripts. The timer would be paused, but the Stage watchers of the date/time blocks wouldn't. Cloud variables would take a rest.

*** Note from the Scratch Team ***

Please don't add links to browser extensions, userstyles or userscripts - that's going against this policy.

+1 This is a very useful feature, especially for long animations or computations/renders. We should do what BYOB did: a pause button next to the green flag. Also, I would pause everything, including the timers, dates, and cloud variables. Like a screenshot would.

+1 on pausing timers. I was referring to the system clock “marching on”

So rethinking this a bit…
Just noticed that hitting “Stop” does not pause the timer. So it is in effect the time since you opened the project or last reset. So if you “pause timers” that could cause problems with some exisitng projects (or at least ones I can imagine someone built) that keeps track of how long you've been playing a game and adjusts your “life force” accordingly. And in general breaking previous expected behavior is a bad thing.

So you would need a block to detect the “Pause” (and also “Stop”???) to allow kids to handle this in whatever way they chose.

mrsteve
+1 on pausing timers. I was referring to the system clock “marching on”So rethinking this a bit…Just noticed that hitting “Stop” does not pause the timer. So it is in effect the time since you opened the project or last reset. So if you “pause timers” that could cause problems with some exisitng projects (or at least ones I can imagine someone built) that keeps track of how long you've been playing a game and adjusts your “life force” accordingly. And in general breaking previous expected behavior is a bad thing.So you would need a block to detect the “Pause” (and also “Stop”???) to allow kids to handle this in whatever way they chose.

When you pause it would pause the timer. And no scripts would execute, so it would be as if no time had passed in the project.

scimonster,

I understand, my concern is that pausing timers could create unintended consequences and potentially change the behavior of existing projects (or new ones created in 1.4).

Ie: a “trick” to beat a game that uses a timer, where you pause and then move things around, then hit resume. Or a strategy game that times your moves and you pause to think about it to avoid the timer expiring or losing points.

Another case would be collecting data in a cloud list on times to solve a maze for an existing contest. One could use pause to “improve” your score.

In fact the above things could happen even if they didn't use a timer but used a counter that incremented/decremented in a forever loop.




So how to deal with the above cases…

• Well we could have two types of timers (just to confuse kids and raise the floor a bit ) where one is pausable and one isn't.

• We could have blocks to detect “Pause hit”

• We could have a timer option (pause on pause, or not)
  
  

Okay all that said, I don't even know if such projects exist or how many actually use timers and for what purpose. And if they did exist and kids found “tricks” (I HATE the word “cheats”) it could be argued that could create a learning opportunity.

hmmmmm….. In any case more thought needed.

+1!
but also,

i think everything should rest, even watchers, but yet when they continue, they go to what they should be, (except the timer was paused the whole time so that seems to just go normally) so like, the watcher says 14:20:23 and they pause it, it stays the same, 2 minutes pass, then, once they continue, it jumps to 14:22:23

Yes I agree with all the above.

Perhaps we could have a hat block que certain scripts by the pause command? Like if you wanted a pause menu to appear? Technically you can program these things mostly but it's very tedious and difficult at times.

Also, if we could have a “pause all scripts” command block? If you wanted to have the player press “P” to pause instead of moving the mouse over to the pause button.

EDIT: I like the idea now. Support.

PkmnQ wrote:

This would break one of my games, using PAUSE BUFFERING!
What is pause buffering?
You pause for 1 frame and unpause for 1 frame and repeat.
Anyways,
The name of the game is orange.
But using pause buffering, you could get a win.
So I suggest that there should be a refresh time of 2 seconds.

I doubt anyone would be able to click the pause button that fast.
As for the suggestion itself, it could be nice in theory, but you can pretty easily work around it using a broadcast and variables

Saiid

Support!

Cub56 wrote:

Support!

Why?
Please be constructive when supporting.

SUPPORT! I do so support. 100%!! It would help on so many levels, and remove the need for creating a pause script. Maybe you could even add a “When Pause Unclicked block”
so that once Pause is done, something will happen.

Support. This would be very useful

Support. I was going to post this. Reason for support: What if you were playing a game where your character moved without you clicking, pressing key etc, and you needed to use the toilet? A pause and resume button would certainly be useful

Support! Great idea, specially if its a fast project so I can't run it on phosphorus to use dat pause button.

Saiid wrote:

PkmnQ wrote:

This would break one of my games, using PAUSE BUFFERING!
What is pause buffering?
You pause for 1 frame and unpause for 1 frame and repeat.
Anyways,
The name of the game is orange.
But using pause buffering, you could get a win.
So I suggest that there should be a refresh time of 2 seconds.

I doubt anyone would be able to click the pause button that fast.
As for the suggestion itself, it could be nice in theory, but you can pretty easily work around it using a broadcast and variables

Saiid

Well, guess what? I know a thing AutoHotKey that can be used for a script to make rapid clicks. Don't believe me? Just search for it.

What about do pause as a block so people wont worry about pause cheating???

when [space v] key pressed
pause until <key [space v] pressed?> :: control

Hmm, it seems like it may be complex, but since you can do this with ROBLOX Studio, I suppourt it.

I definitely support this. That would be so useful! One time, I pressed the “stop” button, thinking it was a “pause” button, but then, of course it restarted the whole game I was doing when I clicked again.
You can make a block to pause a game, but a lot of people do not know that and do not incorporate one in their scripts.

What about this work-around?

when [space v] key pressed
wait until <not <key [space v] pressed?>>
stop [other scripts in sprite v]
broadcast [stop v]
wait until <key [space v] pressed?>
when I receive [stop v] //This script goes in the other sprites.
stop [other scripts in sprite v]
stop [this script v]