How do I pause my game?

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What code do I need to make my game pause? How do I stop everything?

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Answer by Lucas Meijer 1 · Oct 20, 2009 at 12:14 AM

In the Editor, you can just click the pause button.

From gamecode, you can set Time.timeScale to 0. See the help entry. This should pause most of your game, assuming you don't rely on stuff like asking the actual system time. You can also set timeScale to anything between 0 and 1 (and even 1 and up), to modify the speed at which your gamesimulation progresses.

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BerggreenDK · Jun 26, 2011 at 08:07 PM 7

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will this have any influence on any sounds/music playing if you scale the speed?

dreasgrech · Apr 12, 2013 at 06:55 AM 2

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@BerggreenD$$anonymous$$: No, but you can manually reduce the pitch of your music to match the timeScale.

enoy · Aug 29, 2017 at 06:01 PM 0

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So then Time.timeScale = 0.0 pauses all thank you Lucas $$anonymous$$eijer

rahul_noob · Sep 14, 2018 at 01:15 PM 0

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so if I need to play the screen again, then will the play button work when the Time.timeScale is 0?

Answer 2

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Answer by Jakko van Hunen · Nov 16, 2009 at 08:04 PM

If you rely on the time to remain active during the pause you can also implement it a following way.

If an MonoBehaviour needs a pause action, like e.g. stopping the animation, implement an OnPauseGame() function. To handle resuming, implement an OnResumeGame() function.

When the game needs to pause, call the OnPauseGame function on all objects using something like this:

Object[] objects = FindObjectsOfType (typeof(GameObject));
foreach (GameObject go in objects) {
    go.SendMessage ("OnPauseGame", SendMessageOptions.DontRequireReceiver);
}

And to resume call OnResumeGame on all objects.

A basic script with movement in the Update() could have something like this:

protected bool paused;

void OnPauseGame ()
{
    paused = true;
}

void OnResumeGame ()
{
    paused = false;
}

void Update ()
{
    if (!paused) {
        // do movement
    }
}

A big benefit of doing it like this is that you can implement object specific pausing and resuming functionality, like storing and restoring information for objects that use physics.

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fireDude67 · Dec 12, 2010 at 06:21 PM 1

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Does that really pause the game? Or just send a message to all GameObjects that they should pause, but does not set Time.timeScale or something like it to 0?

Cereal_Killa · Nov 08, 2015 at 08:58 AM 1

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So here you can pause movement caused by code, but how do you stop movement caused by unity's internal physics engine?

Der-Die-Das · Sep 14, 2018 at 04:59 AM 0

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I'd solve it with a IPauseable Interface. Would look cleaner to me. But great solution anyways.

Answer 3

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Answer by Jerrod Putman · Oct 20, 2009 at 04:40 AM

If you set Time.timeScale to 0, yet you still want to do some processing (say, for animating pause menus), remember that Time.realtimeSinceStartup is not affected by Time.timeScale. You could effectively set up your own "deltaTime" in your animated menus by subtracting the previous recorded Time.realtimeSinceStartup from the current one.

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UltimateBrent · Nov 12, 2011 at 12:23 AM 1

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You rock, that saved me so much trouble!

AlwaysSunny · Jan 31, 2014 at 07:49 PM 0

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Response to question in previous comment: Just keep a private float called lastRealtimeSinceStartup, and set it equal to Time.realtimeSinceStartup at the end of the script's Update() method. Anywhere else in Update(), subtracting one from the other will give you the effective deltaTime, even when Time.timeScale is zero.

Answer 4

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Answer by AngryAnt · Oct 20, 2009 at 01:11 PM

If you're in the editor, you also have the option of calling Debug.Break to pause execution. This works just like pressing the pause button and is ignored at runtime, so you could use it to make debug-time "breakpoints".

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Bampf · Nov 20, 2009 at 06:00 PM 1

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Programmers should note that Debug.Break does not act like a true breakpoint. Execution is not paused on that line, but rather, the game stops after the current frame has finished processing.

AngryAnt ♦♦ · Nov 23, 2009 at 01:01 PM 0

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Yep. Functionality is just like pressing pause.

Answer 5

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Answer by Martin Schultz · Oct 20, 2009 at 07:41 AM

Setting Time.timeScale to 0.0 works great as you still can have at the same time a Unity GUI on top that is still clickable and the rest of Unity freezes meanwhile.

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Fattie · Apr 29, 2013 at 09:07 AM 0

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it's a great point that UnityGUI does indeed keep going when timescale is zero. (But it can cut both ways, be careful! :) )

How do I pause my game?

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