Category Archives: Videos

Big Thanks for the Donations & Beta Update!

Posted on by
5

I can’t say enough at how thankful I am to the couple of people that have donated to the Goldsprints FX development. To date the two donators have given $250.00 USD to the development Wow! This puts a big smile on my face. If a few people are this excited about GFX then I need to keep working on the development. I am going to use the software no matter what for my own goldsprints events. If other find it useful that is a big plus. I can’t tell you how many hours have gone into the development but it 100′s quickly approacing a thousand. I am very thankful for the donations and it inspires me to keep pushing the development further. If you find GFX useful please consider contributing to the development. Click the donate link in the side bar.

I have decided to get each new releases in the hands of kind people that make a donation before the general public. Probably a good week in advance, maybe more. I can’t think of another way to reward them for supporting the development efforts.

And with that, I feel it is necessary to give an update on the development of beta 2. I am very happy to say that I just testing the rostering system and it works without any bugs. Yipee! I am going to test everything out Friday and plan to release the beta 2 over the weekend to the people that have donated . There are still a few bells and whistles to add into the rostering system but people have events coming up next weekend, including me. So some testing is key right now.

Here is a video of the rostering system as of tonight. I am pretty happy with everything so far.

The system now has a SQLite backend. Data from the roster is save to the database so you can shut down and launch again without losing any racers or their times. Currently name, time, and gender make up the roster. If people race more than once only their best time is kept. It is very easy to sort on the times, gender or names if you like.

A few features that will be in the beta 2.1 release over the next couple of weeks include:

  • Jumping to next/previous race from the winner screen. This will keep the roster screen away from the audience as much as possible.
  • Some kind of ‘Standing’ screen so you can see the top racers. Kind of like a top 10 list for both male and female racers.
  • The ability to have more than one race in the system. You can’t add multiple events at this time. Just one.
  • Add in wins/loses on an event level. In addition to name, best time, and gender, win/loses will also show.
  • Auto load races with a single button click. Take the entire roster, randomize it based on gender then load them to the race list.
  • There are a few usability things that would help. A few are not allowing deletion of a user if they are added to the race list. Updating a racers name and gender after they have been added. A handful of others and any suggestions from users have.

I can’t think of anything else I want to add into the rostering system. If you have some requests that you have not posted yet let me know. Donating members look for beta 2 this weekend. Everyone else in a few weeks.

Rostering Feature Progress Video

Posted on by
Reply

Things are moving along on the rostering feature. In this video I prepopluated the roster to save a little time. There are lots of changes but here is a quick break down.

You can now add any number of racers to a race. GFX will now adjust the race display to the number of racers you have add to the current race. Max racers are set in the Setting screen. If you set your max to 2 racers you can’t race more than 2 to a race. This is different than the current beta 1 work flow. Full sorting on the roster list on any field is available. Also, races are removed from the race list when they are completed. Names now show on the race bars as well.

On another note, it looks like I will be able to offer two different windows for quick update to the settings. Also rostering changes can be handled in the future from a different window. Jonathan has been asking for this since early development. I have not developed anything yet related to multiple windows. I did see a Flex example of two app communicating so I am pretty confident it is possible. This will allow you to keep the race window up without letting the audience see you making roster changes or adjustment to the Settings screen. Petter presentation and user/racer experience. This will not be available in the beta 2 unfortunately.

There is still work to do on the rostering system before beta two. Right now my to-do list is as follows.

  1. Unique names on roster only.
  2. On the winner screen add a button to allow next race without going to the roster screen.
  3. Load the entire roster into races in a random order. After all racers are entered one click and ready to go is the goal.
  4. When Serproxy times out due to no activity launch an Alert message instead of jumping to the main display.
  5. Save roster and results to database.
  6. Add a result screen so you can display the top dogs (times) to the audience.
  7. Give ability to name the events and save those events to the database. This will give the ability pre-roster an event for cases when people RSVP online prior to the event.
  8. Show wins and loses for the current event for each racer.

I think that is my full short list before beta 2 release. But when one thing gets fix or added another breaks so you never know.

Rostering Feature and So Much More!

Posted on by
Reply

Here are some teaser screen shots of the interface changes that are coming in the beta 2 release. I have updated the colored racer boxes after some feedback from shaz in Beijing China. As far as I know shaz is the first person other than myself to use GFX in live event. Pretty exciting stuff. I hope shaz took some photos because I would love to see them!

Shaz mentioned that it was a little hard to see the text so I made some updates and adding in a new bolder font. I also increased the size for better viewing. As part of the roster features that are coming in Beta 2 you now see the racers names in the boxes as well. One the bar/speed display the racers names are also displayed on the bars. Their name moves with the progress of the bar. I am very happy with these interface changes and I think they really polish off the race displays.

The Settings screen has a make over as well. A little better layout and help functionality will be added soon. The green ? icons on the panels have a pop up help bubble. I need to write the help text but the functionality is there.

I put in a ton of hours this weekend working on the rostering. I am happy to say that it is fully functional. The rostering feature will changes the way racers are conducted from the beta 1 version. Just last night I was able to fix one of the issues that was causing me fits. Once I figure that out the the rostering feature works 100%. Video coming soon with the next beta maybe mid week!

More Grudge Match Roster Updates

Posted on by
Reply

This is the latest version of the grudge match rostering. Pretty happy with progress so far. Still work to do. Nothing is persistent so no database on the back end yet. But you can see the current functionality in this video. Major things to do yet are…

- database, so data is persistent.
- tabbing between all options.
- number of racers per race to be controlled by the ‘Number of Racers’ setting on the Settings screen. So if you have only two bikes you can’t add more than two racers per race.
- Putting the hooks in so that the race screens see the roster data and show racer’s names.
- And much more…

Thanks to Greg from the Adobe Flex forums for help on some the roster functionality. Capital City Sprints has a goldsprints event on the 27th. My goal is to have the rostering in place so I can actually use it that event.

Quick Updates & Video

Posted on by
Reply

It has been a while since I cracked open the code to GFX and made any updates. I am just having too much fun running and testing my goldsprints setup I guess. Tonight I updated the race countdown to show 3,2,1,GO! instead of 1,2,3,GO!. I also had some time to create an official Capital City Sprints interface for future events.

Someday I am going to release the beta, really I am.