R.I.P. Bar Display

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As I start to add lots of great features to GFX for the next release I have come to a decision that I am 99% sure I will drop the bar display from the next version. There are several reasons that brought me to this decision.

  • Maintaining two different displays is a time issue for me. There are a few bugs with the bar display that I just don’t have time to address right now.
  • The speed graph never really did give me the accuracy I wanted.
  • And the biggest reason came from the fine people that have been donating and sending me photos of their events. 100% of the time the clock face display was used in your events. Hands down it is the preferred display by those that have donated and send me photos and video.

I will focus all my efforts on the display updates on the clock face display going forward. After talking in detail with Jonathan from OpenSprints last night there are several layout improvements I want to commit my time to making. Here are just a few of them.

  • One central timer display. I will remove the individual time display from the colored boxes. Only after a rider finished will their colored box show their time.
  • Remove the meter display on the individual racers boxes for each rider. This doesn’t need to be there since the the clock hands are what people eyes are fixed on in the audience.
  • Make the racer names much larger. People like to yell and cheer for their friends, or the hottest girl/guy on stage, so this will make sure people can read the racer names in the audience.

After these changes the rider boxes will be smaller. I hope this allows me to display the boxes left to right across the screen with the clock display just a bit smaller. This is more intuitive for races since the bikes are setup the same way, left to right, at events. I will post a screen shot of the new display as soon as I get to work on it.

I am hoping late Thursday night that I will have a version for testing for those that want to help out. Friday at the latest.

Update to AIR 2.0

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If you have not updated to AIR 2.0 yet please do so. You can read about all of the new features of AIR 2.0 here. The memory and CPU usage is improved so much that I consider this a mandatory update for GFX users.

AIR should automatically prompt you when you launch any AIR application. Do the update next time you launch GFX and enjoy the performance improvements.

Back on the Horse – GFX Updates!

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Hello fellow GFX’ers. I have not posted in a while. Too much going on in my life lately. Most of it fun summer stuff like biking, family and working on my basement. But never fear, I am back on the horse. Nose down in the code, head swimming in ones and zeros, tasty beverage on my lips, eyelids trying to stay open in the wee hours of the night. I implement new features. It is going to be coming hot and heaving over the next few weeks. I hope it will anyhow. I will be burning the midnight oil so try and keep will you!

To start of the tournament system I need to implement a few features. Tonight I tackled the first on my list. GFX now keeps track of win and loses in the database. This is visible on the roster list and both wins and loses are fully sortable. This makes it really easy to sort on who has the most wins or loses if you like. You can still sort on time, name and gender if you like.

Here is a quick video of the wins and loses additions. Thanks to Kings of Leon for keeping me company tonight. It make the one and zeros flow a little quicker I think.

This update did require a database change and there are most database changes come so I hope you are not too attached to your data. Hey, it is beta software.;) Update: I will be implementing a system that will update your database for you without losing any data going forward. It is beginning to sound more like non-beta. :)

No new release version but I do need testers. Trying to get things done fast and I fear I will miss something a few other pair of eyes will catch for me. Post a comment if you can give some testing time over the next few weeks. Donating member get first priority.

Two Big Fixes Tonight

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I made two big fixes last Saturday night. The next release will be beta 2.2 and it will be available to the general public right away. If you have using GFX please consider making a donation.

The first bug fix was with how the “Next Race” feature works. The second fix was with the “Call It” functionality. Let’s start with the “Next Race” feature. If you have not been following along with the latest development progress you might not be aware that you can now progress through races from the winner screen. See this screen shot to the left. When there is more than one race entered the next race button will be active on the winner screen. As you cycle through each race the previous race will be removed from the schedule, the racers times will be save back to the roster, and the next race will be loaded up ready to go. There was a small bug in the logic to get the next racers and what racers were loaded next. It should now be fixed. I can’t seem to break it anyway. So, I am pretty confident that the next race logic and the racers on deck is solid. One thing I have not figured out yet is where to put the next racer display when four bikes are raced. It fits nice when two racers a but not with four. I will try a few things to get it all on the screen and that will allow me to release beta 2.2.

The way the next racers come up is that GFX always grabs the next race below the current race unless you are on the last race. So there are three possibilities.

  1. Iif you select the first race on the race list and start things off, GFX will go in order from top to bottom.
  2. If you select the last racer on the race list it will move its way up the list from the bottom.
  3. If you select a race in the middle of the race list the system will keep grabbing the race below the current race until it reaches the end of the race list and then move its way up the race list.

It is also important to note that the last race in the list is not deleted when there is only one left. This is because the Next Button is disabled when there are no more races to load. So you only have the Race Again button available. By design the Race Again button is meant to be used to either race the same group again or if you are not using names and just Racer One, Racer Two and so on. You shouldn’t have to keep loading races to the race list so the last one is kept.

The Race Again button is a big time saver if you are only running colors and not racer names. Just delete the last race from the race list when you have gone through the entire race roster and start adding more if needed. I hope that is easy to understand. If not play with it and let me know what questions you have.

The second big update was with the “Call It” functionality. It was not working as expected. I was trying to make it much more complicated that it was. I ended up check if a racer has completed the distance. If they have then great, save then record the time. If a racer has not completed the distance then GFX will enter 99:99:999 into their time and save that. So 99:99:999 is essential a DNF. But they still get on the board of the final time. I am pretty happy with the way this worked out.

When released give these updates a really good test. Don’t assume they are fixed until you test them yourself when beta 2.2 hits the downloads page. If you are visual person like myself the follwing video will demonstrate these updates in action.

Save & Editing GFX Beta 2 Database

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If you are lucky enough to be using the latest version of GFX beta 2 then you know one of the limitation is only one event can be created. Beta 2.2 should support any number of events. But in the mean time, like you, I don’t want to delete the results of my last event. One user wants to transfer over the results from their event to another computer. The computer they used for their event was a loaner. This is pretty easy to do.

But before we get that far I would like to suggest downloading another AIR application called Lita. Lita is a SQLite database administrator. If you want to crack open the database then Lita will let you do just that. If you are not familiar with database tools then it might be too much for you and you should avoid it. I can’t support or answer any questions about Lita so you are on your own if you decide to use it. You can download Lita at http://www.dehats.com/drupal/?q=node/58. You can find instructions on the dehats website.

WARNING: If you edit the database structure Goldsprints FX will probably have problems. Don’t do it. Editing the data is not a problem.

If you want to back up your database or move it to another computer on OS X you can find the GFX.db file at the following location.

Users/YouruserName/Library/preferences/GoldsprinsFX/Local Store

On Ubuntu it will be something like this below. The part that says ‘SomeReallyLongAlphaNumericString’ will be unique to your machine.

/home/YourUserName/.appdata/GoldsprintsFX.SomeReallyLongAlphaNumericString/Local Store/GFX.db

I don’t have a Windows machine to tell you where it is but use the Search and you should be able to find it easy enough.

On a Windows machine you can find it here.

C:\Users\spencer.read\AppData\Roaming\GoldsprintsFX.150CD2418696DCCD52376108DD815BE3EE017F77.1\Local Store

If you are moving the database, first install GFX on your new computer. After you run the app for the first time go a head and exit out. GFX will have created you a GFX.db file. Find the GFX.db file on your new computer and delete it. Copy over your old GFX.db file and your old data will be moved to the new computer.

If you have any questions or something is not clear post a question or comment. If someone can tell me where the Windows GFX.db is stored I will update this post.