Making timers that display in Time format

by Gary Rosenzweig

It seems that recently I have been dealing with time a lot in the Lingo Lounge. Here is yet another aspect of time we can look into: timers. Not only can we make a Lingo behavior count up from a point in time, or count down to a point in time, but we can also display this timer in a familiar format. The two primary ways that you can tell time in Director are the ticks and the milliseconds. The latter is more precise, so we will deal with the milliseconds in this article. The function the milliseconds counts thousandths of a second since Director, the Projector, or the Shockwave movie started. You can record the value of the milliseconds when the timer starts, and then calculate the current time by subtracting the original value of the milliseconds from the current value. If you want to count down to a certain time, then you can record the original value of the milliseconds, plus the amount of time that the timer will count. So, if you want the timer to count down 60 seconds, you can record the milliseconds, plus 60 times 1,000. Then, you subtract the current value of the milliseconds from this original value. Using behavior properties, you can specify a starting time, whether the timer counts up or down, and whether the timer will start automatically or wait for a sendSprite command to trigger it. Here is the part of the behavior's code that does the counting: property pTimerStart property pTimerDirection property pStartImmediately property pTimerRunning property pStartTime property pCurrentString on getPropertyDescriptionList me   list = [:]   addProp list, #pTimerStart, [#comment: "Starting Time (seconds)", #format: #integer, #default: 0]   addProp list, #pTimerDirection, [#comment: "Timer Direction", #format: #string, #range: ["Count Up", "Count Down"], #default: "Count Up"]   addProp list, #pStartImmediately, [#comment: "Start Immediately", #format: #boolean, #default: TRUE]   return list end -- reset time, start timer if supposed to on beginSprite me   reset(me)   if pStartImmediately then start(me) end -- set time to 0 and show it on reset me   pTimerRunning = FALSE   showTime(me,0.0) end -- mark 0 time relative to direction of timer -- start running on start me   if pTimerDirection = "Count Up" then     -- start here and count up from 0     pStartTime = the milliseconds   else     -- count down from pTimerStart     pStartTime = the milliseconds + pTimerStart*1000   end if   pTimerRunning = TRUE   pCurrentString = "" end on exitFrame me   if pTimerRunning then          -- get the current milliseconds     if pTimerDirection = "Count Up" then       currTime = the milliseconds - pStartTime     else       currTime = pStartTime - the milliseconds       if currTime < 0 then currTime = 0     end if          showTime(me,currTime)   end if end The only part of the behavior that is missing is the on showTime handler. This is what will take a value in milliseconds and display it in hours, minutes, seconds and even fractions of a second. The format will be something like this: "HH:MM:SS.SSS". You should also consider that you may not want to display hours all of the time. If your timer is only counting down from 60 seconds, for instance, then there is no point in counting hours. Using a few more behavior properties, you can make hours optional. You can also make minutes optional, and set the number of decimal places shown. Here are the new properties: property pShowHours property pShowMinutes property pDecimalPlaces Here are how they appear in the on getPropertyDescriptionList handler: addProp list, #pShowHours, [#comment: "Show Hours", #format: #boolean, #default: FALSE] addProp list, #pShowMinutes, [#comment: "Show Minutes", #format: #boolean, #default: TRUE] addProp list, #pDecimalPlaces, [#comment: "Number of Decimal Places", #format: #integer, #range: [0,1,2,3], #default: 1] The on showTime handler takes a number, representing milliseconds, and determines the seconds, minutes and hours from it. It also determines how many milliseconds are left over. Then, it puts together a string based on the choices made in the behavior properties dialog. It can put together something as simple as seconds: "SS", or something complex as hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds: "HH:MM:SS.SSS". -- create time string from integer on showTime me, millisec   -- calculate hours, minutes, seconds and milliseconds   sec = integer(millisec/1000)   min = integer(sec/60)   sec = sec - min*60   hour = integer(min/60)   min = min - hour*60   millisec = millisec - sec*1000 - min*60*1000 - hour*60*60*1000   -- show hours if requested   if pShowHours then     hourString = string(hour+100).char[2..3]&":"   else     hourString = ""   end if   -- show minutes if requested   if pShowMinutes then     minString = string(min+100).char[2..3]&":"   else     minString = ""   end if   -- always show seconds   secString = string(sec+100).char[2..3]   -- milliseconds   if pDecimalPlaces = 0 then     milliString = ""   else     milliString = string(millisec+1000).char[2..4]     -- cut down to number requested     milliString = "."&milliString.char[1..pDecimalPlaces]   end if   -- create time string   text = hourString&minString&secString&milliString   -- update text member only if needed   if text <> pCurrentString then     sprite(me.spriteNum).member.text = text     pCurrentString = text   end if end As you can see, this behavior expects to be placed on a text or field sprite. The time string is placed directly into the sprite's member's text property. To save time, the new time string is compared to the last one displayed. If they are the same, then no attempt is made to reset the text member. So, for instance, if "01:59" is displayed once, and the next time through the time is still "01:59", then the text member will not be updated. Here is this behavior in action. The first button will begin a count up starting at 0 and displaying hours, minutes, seconds, and two decimal places of seconds. The second button will begin a count down from two minutes using minutes, seconds and one decimal place. A Director 8 sample movie is available for download in Mac or PC format. While this behavior can operate completely by itself, you will most likely want to connect it to another part of your program. If another handler in your movie wants to get the current time, you can add a handler like this to return it: on getTime me   return the milliseconds - pStartTime end Then, you can simply use sendSprite(7,#getTime) , where 7 is the sprite being used for the timer, to get the current time. If you are counting down instead of up, you can alter the on exitFrame handler to signal another behavior or movie handler once the currTime is less than or equal to zero. Other possibilities include having timers that don't show seconds, but only minutes and hours. This behavior only works for times less than 100 hours, but you can easily alter it to show 100 or more hours, or possibly show days as well. You can also alter it, with a little more work, to show negative time.