Table of Contents

Schedulers

Ceres Schedulers runs time- or frame-based callbacks without creating a coroutine per operation. Each registration returns a value-type SchedulerHandle that controls the scheduled work.

Schedule work

Use Delay for elapsed time and WaitFrame for frame counts. Both support Update, FixedUpdate, and LateUpdate through TickFrame.

using Ceres.Schedulers;
using UnityEngine;

public sealed class DelayedAction : MonoBehaviour
{
    private SchedulerHandle _handle;

    private void OnEnable()
    {
        _handle = Scheduler.Delay(
            1.5f,
            OnElapsed,
            TickFrame.Update,
            isLooped: false,
            ignoreTimeScale: true);
    }

    private void OnDisable()
    {
        _handle.Dispose();
        _handle = default;
    }

    private static void OnElapsed()
    {
        Debug.Log("Elapsed");
    }
}

Use the ref SchedulerHandle overload when replacing an existing schedule. It cancels the previous handle before assigning the new one.

Scheduler.Delay(ref _handle, 0.25f, Refresh);

Handle lifecycle

SchedulerHandle exposes IsValid, IsDone, Pause, Resume, Cancel, and Dispose. Dispose cancels unfinished work and is the normal lifetime boundary for a component-owned schedule.

Await an existing schedule when sequential async code is clearer than a completion callback.

using Ceres.Schedulers;
using Cysharp.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Threading;

public static async UniTask WaitBeforeContinue(CancellationToken cancellationToken)
{
    SchedulerHandle handle = Scheduler.Delay(0.5f, static () => { });
    await handle.WaitAsync(cancellationToken);
}

WaitAsync cancels the schedule when its cancellation token is canceled by default. A completed handle no longer represents live work.

Low-overhead callbacks

The DelayUnsafe and WaitFrameUnsafe overloads accept SchedulerUnsafeBinding values, including managed function pointers and instance-bound function pointers. Use them only in performance-sensitive code that can compile with unsafe code enabled. The delegate overloads are the default API for ordinary gameplay code.

Scheduler Debugger

Open Tools > Ceres > Debug > Scheduler Debugger in Play Mode to inspect active schedules and pause, resume, cancel, or clear them.

Enable Stack Trace under Project Settings > Ceres to attach call-site information. Stack trace capture allocates in the Editor, so disable it while profiling allocations.

Constraints

  • A handle is a value type; keep the returned value if the operation may need cancellation.
  • Looped schedules continue until canceled or disposed.
  • ignoreTimeScale applies to time delays. Frame counters always advance on their selected Unity update phase.
  • Capturing lambdas can allocate even though the scheduler storage itself is pooled.
  • Events for routed notifications and frame-bound event dispatch
  • Tasks for prerequisite and sequence orchestration
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