Game Center turn timeouts

Question

This might seem like a pretty obvious question, but I've been combing through Apple's documentation and can't seem to find a straight answer.

What actually happens when a turn times out - that is to say, the time interval passed as the turnTimeout parameter to endTurnWithNextParticipants:turnTimeout:matchData:completionHandler: has passed? Logic dictates that either there would be a callback similar to handleTurnEventForMatch:didBecomeActive: to explicitly handle no move being made, or the next player in the nextParticipants array would receive a turn notification.

Unfortunately, although Apple are quite happy to describe how turnTimeout limits how long a player has to act (and to tell you that it's up to your game to decide how to handle this), there's no information about what methods are called or what data is supplied, and I'm seeing some very odd behavior - namely the player who passed is getting a handleTurnEvent notification with the same match data as the turn they just timed out on. Anyone have any advice?

Answer 1

Apple's documentation on what it does:

If the next player to act does not take their turn in the specified interval, the next player in the array receives a notification to act. This process continues until a player takes a turn or the last player in the list is notified.

In the case of a 2 player match, at least during testing, nothing actually happens. If P1 plays a turn the list of next participants looks like [ P2, P1 ]. If P2 times out, P1 should get notified as it is the last one in the list, however P1 just went, Apple must consider "end of the list" as when you get back to the person that last played and not when you actually run out of people. This prevents people from playing two turns in a row. Although is not what I would expect to happen based on the documentation. I have not tested this in a 3+ player game.