how to create a timer countdown

It's supposed to be timers c name 600 down icon but looking at the code it seems that it's not actually implemented. If you could open an issue for this so we actually remember to do it, it would be appreciated.

As for Timers it's definitely not implemented and you can't do it. What you can do is change the settings entry "CustomLowToHigh", but it will be that for all custom timers created.

Lua doesn't have timers, so I don't understand your question.

How do you make a timer counting up? It's simple to adjust from there.

Um, actually no. The semantics of the value returned by os.time are implementation defined. To get the difference between two times you need to use the os.difftime function.

local start_time = os.time()
local elapsed_time = os.difftime(os.time(), start_time)

To get the time remaining until some future event you can do this.

local end_time = os.time() + delay
local time_remaining = os.difftime(end_time, os.time())

 
Edit: This is what I get for replying right before bed.
 
While the second snippet above will probably work, it is incorrect. The correct way to do it is to construct a table with the correct date and time of the future event and then pass that to os.time.

Honestly, the easiest way would be to use the Timers plugin for that. I'm currently implementing the feature to set the counting direction and will push an update later today. But if you want just a draggable text box you can use what Iryoku said to calculate the remaining time and update a text box with it (for example in the pre-render event). Let me know if you want a code example for that.

That's actually a neat idea. I would love to display timers next to each item when you look into the treasure pool. For that to work I'd need to figure out how menus are being used, which I already looked into in the past. Alternatively one could make a treasure pool replacement that always shows items, current lot/lotter and time remaining, and so on.

You can use packets to find the right event. Every time a treasure pool packet comes in you can update the timer.

Could make it so that when you hover over any item, it shows an ordered list of lotters and their lots

require('maths')
texts = require('texts')
 
t = texts.new('${hours||%.2u:}${minutes||%.2u:}${seconds||%.2u}${milliseconds||.%.1u}')
 
goal = 0
 
windower.register_event('prerender', function()
    local diff = goal - os.clock()
    if diff > 0 then
        t.hours = (diff / 3600):floor()
        t.minutes = ((diff / 60) % 60):floor()
        t.seconds = (diff % 60):floor()
        t.milliseconds = ((diff * 10) % 10):floor()
        t:show()
    elseif diff > -5 then
        if diff:floor() % 2 == 1 then
            t:color(153, 255, 102)
        else
            t:color(255, 255, 255)
        end
    else
        t:hide()
    end
end)
 
windower.register_event('addon command', function(seconds)
    goal = os.clock() + tonumber(seconds)
end)

require('maths')
texts = require('texts')
config = require('config')
packets = require('packets')
res = require('resources')
 
settings = config.load()
 
clock = texts.new(settings)
 
for i = 0, 9 do
    clock:appendline('${item' .. i .. '||%s - }${minutes' .. i .. '||%.2u:}${seconds' .. i .. '||%.2u}')
end
 
clock:show()
 
goals = {}
 
windower.register_event('prerender', function()
    for i = 0, 9 do
        local diff = 300 - os.difftime(os.time(), packet.Timestamp)
        if diff > 0 then
            clock['minutes' .. i] = ((diff / 60) % 60):floor()
            clock['seconds' .. i] = (diff % 60):floor()
        else
            clock['minutes' .. i] = nil
            clock['seconds' .. i] = nil
        end
    end
end)
 
windower.register_event('incoming chunk', function(id, data)
    -- Ignore all non-drop packets
    if id ~= 0x0D2 then
        return
    end
 
    local packet = packets.parse('incoming', data)
 
    -- Ignore gil drop
    if packet.Item == 0xFFFF then
        return
    end
 
    goals[packet.Index] = packet.Timestamp + 300
    clock['item' .. packet.Index] = res.items[packet.Item].name
end)