# Command Cooldown

Some types of games want to limit how often a command can be run. If a character casts the spell Firestorm, you might not want them to spam that command over and over. Or in an advanced combat system, a massive swing may offer a chance of lots of damage at the cost of not being able to re-do it for a while. Such effects are called cooldowns.

This page exemplifies a very resource-efficient way to do cooldowns. A more ‘active’ way is to use asynchronous delays as in the command duration tutorial, the two might be useful to combine if you want to echo some message to the user after the cooldown ends.

## Non-persistent cooldown

This little recipe will limit how often a particular command can be run. Since Commands are class instances, and those are cached in memory, a command instance will remember things you store on it. So just store the current time of execution! Next time the command is run, it just needs to check if it has that time stored, and compare it with the current time to see if a desired delay has passed.

    import time
    from evennia import default_cmds

    class CmdSpellFirestorm(default_cmds.MuxCommand):
        """
        Spell - Firestorm

        Usage:
          cast firestorm <target>

        This will unleash a storm of flame. You can only release one
        firestorm every five minutes (assuming you have the mana).
        """
        key = "cast firestorm"
        locks = "cmd:isFireMage()"

        def func(self):
            "Implement the spell"

            # check cooldown (5 minute cooldown)
            now = time.time()
            if hasattr(self, "lastcast") and \
                    now - self.lastcast < 5 * 60:
                message = "You cannot cast this spell again yet."
                self.caller.msg(message)
                return

            #[the spell effect is implemented]

            # if the spell was successfully cast, store the casting time
            self.lastcast = now

We just check the `lastcast` flag, and update it if everything works out. Simple and very effective since everything is just stored in memory. The drawback of this simple scheme is that it’s non-persistent. If you do `@reload`, the cache is cleaned and all such ongoing cooldowns will be forgotten. It is also limited only to this one command, other commands cannot (easily) check for this value.

## Persistent cooldown

This is essentially the same mechanism as the simple one above, except we use the database to store the information which means the cooldown will survive a server reload/reboot. Since commands themselves have no representation in the database, you need to use the caster for the storage.

        # inside the func() of CmdSpellFirestorm as above

        # check cooldown (5 minute cooldown)

        now = time.time()
        lastcast = self.caller.db.firestorm_lastcast

        if lastcast and now - lastcast < 5 * 60:
            message = "You need to wait before casting this spell again."
            self.caller.msg(message)
            return

        #[the spell effect is implemented]

        # if the spell was successfully cast, store the casting time
        self.caller.db.firestorm_lastcast = now

Since we are storing as an Attribute, we need to identify the variable as `firestorm_lastcast` so we are sure we get the right one (we’ll likely have other skills with cooldowns after all). But this method of using cooldowns also has the advantage of working between commands - you can for example let all fire-related spells check the same cooldown to make sure the casting of Firestorm blocks all fire-related spells for a while. Or, in the case of taking that big swing with the sword, this could now block all other types of attacks for a while before the warrior can recover.