Timer & Countdown: How to implement state of the art / best practice?

[Syrill]

There are numerous tutorials on the topic of timers and countdowns in UE4 and the UE4 docs also have a section on it. However, there are several different ways to approach an implementation. Thus, I would like to know:

Which way is best in order to achieve accurate timing (including milliseconds) without causing unnecessary overhead?

In case someone reads this post and wonders what different possibilities I could mean (or is just looking for any way to implement a timer or countdown):

• Some implemetations use timer handles (e.g. UE4 docs or this YT tutorial)
• Others utilize the Event Tick in combination with delta time (e.g. proposed in this UE4 question hub answer) (I assume this might be the most advanced method?)
• The Event Tick is sometimes also combined with a 1 second delay in order to get something happening once every second (seems to be rather popular: YT tutorial (and the video before in the playlist), another YT tutorial or the Answer Hub sometimes)
• A timeline is also frequently used, although the documentation says it is designed for “simple time-based animation” stuff. (e.g. this tutorial from the Unreal Engine YT channel or another YT tutorial)

[Syrill]

So far - on Facebook - I only got the reply that timelines cause overhead and Event Tick with 1 second delay is sensitive to errors…

[Nachtmahr]

Advantages Timer:

Easy to Controll via Handle. Saves you from multiple bool states like isTimerActive, isTimerDone, etc. aswell as not keeping track of a counter. Once its done its gone no more worries here that something is still executing.

Advantages Event Tick:

Best used on things that run indefinitly or to a Unknown amount of Time. If you find yourself adding lots of bools/branches Consider if you actually want to use a Timer instead. Need to keep track of the Counting.

Advantages Timeline:

Timelines return you the Value specified at given time passed from the Curve you set (at time X return Value Y). They are not meant to be used as Counter at all. They have also a good Set of Controls and are a Component that comes with a slight overhead.

Advantages Delays (Or better call it Latent Actions)

A Delay is a Latent Action and its basicly a dont proceed execution flow for x Time. The catch is everything before still gets executed when the Function is called again that often leads to undesired behaviour and a classic Bug Source. Delays are a Bad example for a Latent Action but if you think of something like a MoveTo Latent Action it makes sense that you don´t want to execute anything after it until you reach the Target. And thats the advantage of latent Actions: Interupting execution flow until the Action is completed.

Thats a Quick summery of the things you looking at.