NSTimer won't trigger function in object - object

Question

I am making a simple game, and every second, I need the player to lose a food "point". Currently, I have the declaration like so.
var timer = NSTimer.scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval(1.0, target: player, selector: Selector(player.foodLoss()), userInfo: nil, repeats: true)
And I never hear from the timer again, it has, to the best of my knowledge, no effect on the rest of the app. My Player class is as follows
class Player: Character {
var food = 100
init(startingHealth: Int = 100, startingFood: Int = 100) {
super.init(imageNamed: "Player", entityName: "Player")
food = startingFood
sprite = SKSpriteNode(imageNamed: "Player")
}
func adjustFood(amountToAdjustBy adjustAmount: Int) -> Bool{
if food + adjustAmount <= 100 {
food += adjustAmount
return true
} else {
return false
}
}
func foodLoss() {
food -= 1
print("food lost")
}
}
I get no error when running the code. The only thing that happens is player.food is completely unaffected. Any help with my problem would be very helpful.
Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You need to change the selector. Right now you would actually call the method foodLoss when creating the timer and use the return value (Void) as the method the timer should call all the time. It therefore will not do anything.
To fix that you need to provide a different selector. For example use Selector("foodLoss") instead:
var timer = NSTimer.scheduledTimerWithTimeInterval(1.0, target: player, selector: Selector("foodLoss"), userInfo: nil, repeats: true)
To make that work you might have to mark the foodLoss function as #objc:
#objc func foodLoss() {
food -= 1
print("food lost")
}