Lua Timer(s) on command - timer

Question

Sorry, but this one is what some may call an open-ended question.
I am attempting to make a command where if someone says !spectate, they are put in spectate mode, and stay in there for 30 seconds. So far I have been totally unsuccessful, and as such, have no idea really of what I'm doing, so not erroneous code available :(
Here's some things which may assist those who answer:
To put one in spectate mode, after someone says !spectate (without the 30 second limit) you do this:
if Message == "!spectate" then
InputConsole("spectate %d", pID)
end
The game this will be used with is Command and Conquer: Renegade
Sorry I can't be much more helpful than that, I am totally out of my depth here!

Answer 1

However you'd go about doing this would be specific to Renegade's Lua API. I've never used it myself, but the almighty Google reckons that Renegades uses LuaTT, for which the API docs say:
You can have only 255 scripts attached to objects. For timers, make your own api based of OnThink and os.time
The docs aren't particularly good, but a quick look at the example code found here suggests something along these lines would work:
local timers = {
{ time = 1343910384, cb = function() doSomething() end }
}
function OnThink() -- this is called every frame
for i = 1, #timers do
if os.time() > timers[i].time then
timers[i].cb()
table.remove(timers, i)
end
end
end
The code you posted would then look something like this:
if Message == "!spectate" then
InputConsole("spectate %d", pID) -- move player to spectators
table.insert(timers, {
time = os.time() + 30, -- 30 seconds from now,
cb = function() InputConsole("spectate %d", pID) end -- remove player from spectators
})
end