Hi everyone.

I'm trying to have a message/notification appear in the top-left of the screen when a certain event happens. The first time the event happens, it works fine and the text appears. All subsequent times after that, the message shows up between three and ten times in a row. I can't figure out what's causing it. Any idea what I've done wrong in my lua? Pictures and code below.

How it looks the first time (no problems here):

How it looks each subsequent time (problem):

Here's the code that runs this: That whole function "GoForBombing" gets called the first time when a particular object is destroyed, using OnObjectKillName, and as you can see by my comments in the code, from then on as long as either CP6 or CP7 belongs to team 2 then the bomber should keep coming back. That part works fine. I'm just trying to make it look a bit nicer by not having the message absolutely spammed on the player's screen. Thanks!

Your if statement ("GetObjectTeam("cp6") == DEF..etc.) isn't a one-time condition. That should fire multiple times, because the condition is (theoretically) continually met.

Right but isn't it just being checked once each time I call the function GoForBombing?

Right, duh, I'm an idiot. I'll take a look back once I've slept.

Thanks. I've looked through that code any number of times and can't figure it out.

I assume you are calling GoForBombing() more than one time during the match, right?
Now, each time you call this function you will register a new OnTimerElapse() event, thus for each time you call the function it will be executed i+1 time.
So just enclose the elapse function with an if-statement and you should be good: (Destroying a timer will not release the OnTimerElapse function)

timer_elapse_initialized = false

function GoForBombing()
[...]
if not timer_elapse_initialized then
OnTimerElapse(...)
timer_elapse_initialized = true
end
[...]
end

It kind of works...

The message now displays 1x the first run, 1x the second run, then 2x the third, 3x the fourth, 4x the fifth, etc. I'll show you how I put it into my code: I have tried putting that first "timer_elapse_initialized = false" bit above PostLoad, in PostLoad, and in GoForBombing, and they all yield the same result.
I suppose it works the first two times because timer_elapse_initialized is a boolean, and only has two states? What do you think?

So why are you destroying your timers at all? If you're going to reuse them under the same name, just recycle them by resetting their start values (which you're doing already) and don't destroy them. Initialize them first (CreateTimer) outside the function.

Also, could you describe your desired logic in plaintext? I.e. when your events occur and under what conditions.

I must have misinterpreted the tutorial on timers. It seemed to imply that the DestroyTimer bit was an important part of it. I've gone ahead and removed those lines now.

Essentially what I'm trying to accomplish is this:
1. Gate gets destroyed.
2. Message displays advising that V-Wing is about to fly by.
3. V-Wing flies past.
4. V-Wing reaches end of its animation path.
5. Game starts Invisible-Random-Timer to determine when the V-Wing should fly past again.
6. Invisible-Random-Timer elapses.
7. Steps 2 through 6 repeat ad infinitum.

Here's my current code. I tried using Locutus's idea in a few different variations but it ended up stopping everything after the second bombing run.

Since you are using two OnTimerElapse functions you should encapsulate both with an if-clause.

if not timer_1_elapse_initialized then
OnTimerElapse(BombingResetTime,strafecoord)
end

if not timer_2_elapse_initialized then
OnTimerElapse(GoForBombing, bombingreset)
end

Set timer_X_elapse_initialized to true at the end of each function.

Another note:
Because math.random can cause trouble in multiplayer I'd recommend to replace it with this: (ScriptCB_random() * 10) + 5
ScriptCB_random() returns a random value between 0 and 1 and works perfectly in MP.

This worked. Thanks so much for your help!

For anyone viewing this later on, my code: