Is using multiple Timers in Python dangerous?

Question

I am working on a text-based game in Python 3.1 that would use timing as it's major source of game play. In order to do this effectively (rather than check the time every mainloop, my current method, which can be inaccurate, and slow if multiple people are playing the game at once) I was thinking about using the Threading.Timer class. Is it a bad thing to have multiple timers going at the same time? if so, how many timers is recommended?

For example, the user inputs to start the game. every second after the game starts it decides whether or not something happens, so there's a Timer(1) for every user playing at the same time. If something happens, the player has a certain time to react to it, so a timer must be set for that. If the user reacts quickly enough, that timer needs to end and it will set a new timer depending on what's going to happen next, etc

Answer 1

It should be perfectly safe to have multiple timers going at the same time. Beware that it may not give much of a performance boost, as the CPython interpreter (the standard Python interpreter) uses a GIL (Global Interpreter Lock) which makes threading stuff a bit.... slow.

Answer 2

I think its a bad idea to use Timers in your case.

Using the delayed threads in python will result in more complex code, less accuracy, and quite possible worse performance. Basically, the rule is that if you think you need threads, you don't. Very few programs benefit from the use of threads.

I don't know what you are doing for input. You make reference to multiple players and I'm not sure whether thats on a single keyboard or perhaps networked. Regardless, your current strategy of a main loop may well be the best strategy. Although without seeing how your main loop operates its hard to say for certain.