Countdown Timer to any date and time.

Date: Thu Mar  2 07:46:13 MST 2000
From: Bob Kolk <bob@livemultimedia.net>
Subject: Countdown Timer to any date and time.

This routine uses Buddy API (but you could code around it) and was only tested for the Windows platform, but I can't see why it wouldn't work on a Mac.

The reason for Buddy is that both Macs and PCs allow the user to alter the way the time is displayed, and subsequently, read by director. This can cause a major headache for the programmer, but if you lack Buddy, you could parse the time yourself in lingo (I strongly reccommend against it - get Buddy). Buddy pulls the actual 'military' time from the system, regardless of the users setting. It also pulls the date since Jan 1st which is another important aspect of the code.

Here is the lingo. It was designed to hold on a frame and display the count. Please feel free to email me with any questions you may have.

  on exitFrame
  
  -- This is the Buddy API routines for grabbing the system date and time.
  current_day=basystemtime("%j")
  current_hour=basystemtime("%H")
  current_min=basystemtime("%M")
  current_sec=basystemtime("%S")
  
  -- Set the target time in seconds
  -- The 80 here is Day 80 of the year, the 20 is 8PM
  target_time_sec=(80*24*60*60)+(20*60*60)
  
  -- multiply the current day into seconds
  -- the +30 at the end is a hack needed to fix an odd bug that would roll the minute counter
  -- back at the 30 second mark (try eliminating the +30 (and hack routines below) and see what I
mean).
  current_time_sec=(current_day*24*60*60)+(current_hour*60*60)+(current_min*60)+current_sec+30
  
  -- calculate the number of seconds between the target and current time
  counter=target_time_sec-current_time_sec
  
  -- checks to see if we have hit 00:00:00:00 (-30 due to the hack above)
  if counter<=-30 then go to frame "thanks"

  -- These calculations compute the seconds back into DD:HH:MM:SS  
  dis_sec=counter mod 60  
  counter=integer(counter/60)
  dis_min=counter mod 60
  counter=integer(counter/60)
  dis_hrs=counter mod 24
  counter=integer(counter/24)
  dis_day=counter
  
  -- code needed for the hack above (I know it's yucky, but it works)
  if dis_sec>30 then dis_sec_adj=dis_sec-30
  if dis_sec<30 then dis_sec_adj=dis_sec+30
  if dis_sec_adj=0 then dis_sec_adj="0"

  -- pad the single digits with leading "0"  
  if dis_sec_adj<10 then dis_sec_adj="0"&string(dis_sec_adj)
  if dis_min<10 then dis_min="0"&string(dis_min)
  if dis_hrs<10 then dis_hrs="0"&string(dis_hrs)
  if dis_day<10 then dis_day="0"&string(dis_day)

  -- send the results out to the necessary text members  
  member(5).text=string(dis_day)
  member(6).text=string(dis_hrs)
  member(7).text=string(dis_min)
  member(8).text=string(dis_sec_adj)
  
  -- repeat (of course)
  go to the frame
  
end