The issue you're experiencing with the time scale not taking effect immediately when using spine.get_animation_state().set_time_scale(5.0) might be due to the way the animation state is being updated or applied. In the spine-godot runtime, changes to the animation state, such as setting a new time scale, may not be reflected until the next animation update cycle. To ensure that the time scale change takes effect immediately, you can try manually updating the animation state after setting the time scale. This can be done by calling the update method on the animation state with a small delta time, which will force the animation state to process the change:
spine.get_animation_state().set_time_scale(5.0)
spine.get_animation_state().update(0) # Force an update to apply the time scale change
This approach should help in making the time scale change take effect immediately without waiting for an animation change.
