Key press elapsed time

Question

I'm building a shooting game. I want to record how long the player has the F key pressed in order to use that value to remove ammunition sprites from the stage.
My application loops in frame 1.
I have a script that subtracts the key press time from the system time on key release. I think the repeat rate of the keyboard is interfering with this as the output figures are quite random and holding the key down for longer returns a lower number.
global gFire, gTotal, gStartTime
on startMovie
  the keyDownScript = "handleKeydown"
  the keyUpScript = "handleKeyUp"
end startMovie
--Handler to fire
on handleKeydown
  if the key = "f" then
    gStartTime = the milliseconds
  end if 
end handleKeydown
--Handler to stop firing
on handleKeyUp
  if the key = "f" then
    gfire = (the milliseconds - gStartTime)/10
    gLeft = gTotal - gFire
    gTotal = gLeft -- gTotal is used to incrementally turn off sprite visibility
    put gfire -- Trace elapsed time to Message window
  end if
end handleKeyUp
--This sequence removes bullets from the stage\
according to he time spent firing
on enterFrame
  if tTotal < 900 then
    sprite(10).visible = False --this repeated for a sequence of 10 sprites
  end if
end
The other problem with this is that it doesn't update the stage till the key is released, so a player can defeat the logic by just holding the key down continuously (especially because the value of gFire doesn't increase as expected)
Ideally I'd like to record the elapsed time the key is down, add it to a global and have it update the stage at the frame rate, so I guess it would have to be within a frame event handler.
Any help would be gratefully received.

Answer 1

MStewart,
Thanks for doing that. I decided to do a little something like that and just reworked it a bit. Dropped the pause on a case structure and put the timer inside. seemed easier to do it that way for what I wanted to accomplish. The pause is going to be a good thing to have in the event that the heater needs to be turnd off and worked on for any reason, and it won't accrue time or cycles. Used a "in range and coerce" to compare minutes and seconds and then wired a 4 to 15 mA simulated signal to to the timer. All I got to do now is duplicate it 14 more times and then to work on the cDaq part of it to control relays through dig out signals, and sequence the whole thing to write a file for the analog in. Thanks alot for your help and BowenM too. like I said: you guys are awesome. Got me to thinking in other directions.
Attachments:
Mexico sentinal loop.vi ‏11 KB
milliamp timer w pause function.vi ‏24 KB