Player Timer - GashiStudios

What is the Player Timer?

The Player Timer is a chess-clock / Pokémon Showdown-style cumulative time control. Each player gets a total time budget for the entire match, and a small increment is added back after each of their turns. Run out of time and you lose on the clock.

It works alongside the Turn Timer; the two are independent and can both be active. The Turn Timer is per-turn (“you have 90s to pick a move”), while the Player Timer is per-match (“you have 20 minutes total, plus 10s each turn”).

Cumulative. Your clock only ticks down during your turns.
Increment. A configurable number of seconds is added to your clock at the end of each of your turns (Showdown-style).
Tie-break on timeout. When a player’s clock hits zero, the winner is decided by a configurable rule (time or remaining HP) instead of always defaulting one way.

Enabling It

The Player Timer is off by default and enabled per format in your season preset:

# season_presets/default.yml
singles:
  playerTimerSeconds: 1200        # 20 minutes total per player
  playerTimerIncrement: 10        # +10s added after each of your turns
  playerTimerTieBreak: TIME       # how to decide the winner on timeout

playerTimerSeconds: total time per player, in seconds. 0 (the default) disables the Player Timer for that format.
playerTimerIncrement: seconds added back after each of your turns.
playerTimerTieBreak: what decides the winner when someone times out. TIME (who ran out) or HEALTH (compare remaining force).

It stacks on top of the overall Battle Timer (the hard match-duration cap). Both can be active at once.

How It Plays

Your remaining time is tracked across the whole match, not reset each turn.
Thinking long on a move spends your own clock, not your opponent’s.
The per-turn Turn Timer still applies, so a single stalled turn can’t exceed the turn limit. But repeatedly burning most of each turn’s allowance will drain your Player Timer over time.
On timeout, the result is decided by the configured tie-break, then recorded like any other match end (rating updates, rewards, and so on).