Generic Countdown Timer

 

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My company is producing a New Year's Event and I am trying to figure out a way to generate a six hour countdown into the new millennium. Does Director have any special capability of generating accurate countdowns

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Well, yes and no.  Director can handle time functions to accurately interface with a computer's system clock, but the countdown part requires a little lingo.  It isn't too terribly difficult to create a simple countdown timer to a specific date, but just for fun, lets make one we can reuse for anything.  To track the timer we will need a few things... An "end date" A set of field/text members to display the results A field to show that we are either approaching the date and time or that we have already passed it Lets start with the date.  Thanks to Director 7 we now have full access to the system's date functions.  Before Director 7 we had to rely on either the standard date functions, which could vary from country to country, or the use of a 3rd party Date/Time Xtra.  Now we have the systemDate property that can return the system's clock date in a set format... put the systemDate -- date( 1999, 12, 27 ) We can also create date objects the same way and do addition and subtraction routines on them... put date(2000, 1, 1) - the systemDate -- 10 Using these properties we can easily get the number of days until a specific event.  Time is a little trickier.  Director can return time in a number of formats.  We are interested in "the long time" as it returns hour, minute, seconds, and AM and PM info.   put the long time -- "1:20:57 PM" Since this is a string we need to break each piece down with the item delimiter property and for the seconds use the first 2 characters of item 3 and the AM/PM info is the last 2 characters of item 3. Now that we have that we start our subtraction routines to figure out how much longer we have to wait for the long awaited event.  We can start by basic subtraction. We start by doing the basics.  Waiting hour - current hour, waiting minute - current minute, etc.  Once we do this we need to then look at which ones are negative.  For example, if we are waiting for a time ending in 30 seconds, then what happens when the current time ends in 59 seconds.  To accomplish this we use the old 3rd grade math routine of "borrowing".  By taking 1 minute from the minutes group and converting to 60 seconds we end up with a positive number.  We subtract that minute and repeat with minutes, hours and finally days.  Now all values should be accurate.  Using this collected information we can toss out a sendAllSprites command to all the fields to update their values.   If we have passed the day we just do the same thing with the current date/time - the "waiting" date/time.  That's all there is to it.  Below is the code... --Copyright 1999 Chuck Neal --chuck@mediamacros.com --If you find this code helpful, send me an e-mail and let me know. :-) property spriteNum, cYear, cMonth, cDay, cHour, cMin, cSec, whatItem on getPropertyDescriptionList me   p_list = [:]   if [#field, #text].getOne(sprite(the currentSpriteNum).member.type) = 0 then     --not a text or field member, use as the counter "base"     p_list.addProp(#cYear, [#format : #integer, #comment : "Countdown year (in 4 digit format):", #default : 2000])     p_list.addProp(#cMonth, [#format : #symbol, #comment : "Countdown month:", #default : #January, #range : [#January, #February, #March, #April, #May, #June, #July, #August, #September, #October, #November, #December]])     p_list.addProp(#cDay, [#format : #integer, #comment : "Countdown Day:", #default : 1, #range : [#min : 1, #max : 31]])     p_list.addProp(#cHour, [#format : #integer, #comment : "Countdown Hour:", #default : 0, #range : [#min : 0, #max : 23]])     p_list.addProp(#cMin, [#format : #integer, #comment : "Countdown minute:", #default : 0, #range : [#min : 0, #max : 59]])     p_list.addProp(#cSec, [#format : #integer, #comment : "Countdown second:", #default : 0, #range : [#min : 0, #max : 59]])     p_list.addProp(#whatItem, [#format : #symbol, #comment : "What item is this?:", #default : #Master, #range : [#Master]])   else     --is a field, which one?     p_list.addProp(#whatItem, [#format : #symbol, #comment : "What item is this?:", #default : #Day, #range : [#Day, #Hour, #Min, #Second, #All, #UntilSince]])   end if   return p_list end on exitFrame me   if whatItem = #master then     --only run on the master control     theMonth = [#January, #February, #March, #April, #May, #June, #July, #August, #September, #October, #November, #December].getOne(cMonth)     theDays = date(cYear, theMonth, cDay) - the systemDate     theTime = getTime()     if theDays > 0 then       --before the day       beforeAfter = "before"     else if theDays < 0 then       --after the day       beforeAfter = "after"     else       --same day, dig deeper       if theTime[1] > cHour then         beforeAfter = "after"       else if theTime[1] < cHour then         beforeAfter = "before"       else         --same hour, dig deeper         if theTime[2] > cMin then           beforeAfter = "after"         else if theTime[2] < cMin then           beforeAfter = "before"         else           --same min, dig deeper           if theTime[3] > cSec then             beforeAfter = "after"           else             beforeAfter = "before"           end if         end if       end if     end if     timeList = getDate(me, theDays, theTime, beforeAfter)     sendAllSprites(#updateCount, timeList, beforeAfter)   end if end on updateCount me, timeList, beforeAfter   case whatItem of     #Day :       sprite(spriteNum).member.text = string(timeList[1])     #Hour :       sprite(spriteNum).member.text = string(timeList[2])     #Min :       sprite(spriteNum).member.text = string(timeList[3])     #Second :       sprite(spriteNum).member.text = string(timeList[4])     #All :       sprite(spriteNum).member.text = timeList[1] && "," && timeList[2] & ":" & timeList[3] & ":" & timeList[4]     #UntilSince :       if beforeAfter = "after" then         sprite(spriteNum).member.text = "Since"       else         sprite(spriteNum).member.text = "Until"       end if   end case end on getTime me   baseTime = the long time   the itemDelimiter = ":"   thisHour = integer(baseTime.item[1])   thisMin = integer(baseTime.item[2])   thisSec = integer(baseTime.item[3].char[1..2])   numChars = baseTime.char.count   amPm = baseTime.char[(numchars - 1)..numChars]   if amPm = "pm" then     if thisHour < 12 then       thisHour = thisHour + 12     end if   else     if thisHour = 12 then       thisHour = 0     end if   end if   return [thisHour, thisMin, thisSec] end on getDate me, theDays, theTime, beforeAfter   if beforeAfter = "before" then     theSec = cSec - theTime[3]     theMin = cMin - theTime[2]     theHour = cHour - theTime[1]   else     theSec =theTime[3] - cSec     theMin = theTime[2] - cMin     theHour = theTime[1] - cHour   end if   if theSec < 0 then     --wrap around and borrow from the minutes     theSec = theSec + 60     tOffset = 1   else     tOffset = 0   end if   theMin = theMin - tOffset   if theMin < 0 then     --wrap around and borrow from hours     theMin = theMin + 60     tOffset = 1   else     tOffset = 0   end if   theHour = theHour - tOffset   if theHour < 0 then     --wrap around and borrow from the days     thehour = 24 + theHour     tOffset = 1   else     tOffset = 0   end if   theDays = theDays - tOffset   return [theDays, theHour, theMin, theSec] end on getBehaviorDescription me   describe = "This is a basic countdown behavior. Drop it on a non text/field member to set up the master timer and then drop it on each field/text member you want to use to display."   describe = describe & return & "Once it passes the date it can turn a field from saying " & quote & "Until" & quote & " to one saying " & quote & "Since" & quote   return describe end You can add your own custom output, or even have it trigger an animation, etc when the countdown reaches 0.  Just play with it and have fun.