Author Topic: Countdown to Date/Time  (Read 2862 times)

bsdunbar1

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Countdown to Date/Time
« on: October 18, 2019, 07:45:39 AM »
I am a new user so maybe this can be done some other way?
When I am setting up a tourney I can set the countdown for a certain time Today or Tomorrow. Why is it limited to these 2 days? If I am setting things up on Monday for a tourney I am having on Friday it would be nice to set the countdown to a date + time so I can create the tourney and not have to remember to come back later to set the countdown.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Countdown to Date/Time
« Reply #1 on: October 18, 2019, 09:01:55 AM »
The Countdown feature was originally intended to facilitate a visual countdown, which would automatically start the tournament when completed (although it has been enhanced to allow a selection of actions when the countdown completes).  It seemed unlikely one would start a countdown more than 24 hours in advance that one would running, presumably visible to players.  Also only allowing "today" or "tomorrow" simplified the interface.  Additionally, what happens if you save your tournament with a countdown in progress, exit, come back later, load the tournament, and the countdown has expired?  For these reasons, a limited amount of time was allowed and a countdown is exited when a tournament is loaded (if the loaded tournament was in a countdown it is terminated).

Are you planning to leave a countdown running (leaving the application running that is) for longer than that?

bsdunbar1

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Re: Countdown to Date/Time
« Reply #2 on: December 06, 2019, 01:33:00 PM »
No plans to leave the tourney running for 3 days "waiting" for it to start. I was just used to a different (inferior) app where I would set the date/time of the tourney and all the variables, close the app and forget about it until I opened it getting ready.
Since a date & time were already set it would automatically start the tourney when it reached the start time.

Not a big deal. TD has way more functions tied to this so I understand why you have it the way you have it. No Complaints, just asking.
I'll just get used to setting a countdown once I open the app getting ready for a tourney to start.

Corey Cooper

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Re: Countdown to Date/Time
« Reply #3 on: December 06, 2019, 03:35:35 PM »
I try to never think of a question as a complaint.  To me they are all opportunities to improve the application.

In this case, it gives me the opportunity to see how someone might use the countdown feature, and revisit how it works and why I made the decisions I made regarding it.  Today, I believe if a countdown is in progress when a tournament is saved, then when the tournament is later loaded, the countdown is simply canceled and the user will have to reconfigure and start a countdown if they wish.  Thinking more about this, it doesn't have to be this way.  This situation can be handled intelligently.  If a tournament is saved while in progress, when the tournament is later loaded, it continues right where it left off with the only change being the clock will be paused upon loading.  We can apply the same logic to a countdown.  If the countdown is for a specific length of time, we do the same thing: start where we left off with the countdown clock paused.  If the countdown is to a specific date/time, we allow the countdown to continue if the date/time is in the future (since this type of countdown can't be paused), or cancel the countdown (perhaps with a notification to the user) if the date/time is in the past.

There's no technical reason to allow only today/tomorrow, but it is more convenient as I believe this is how most countdowns are configured.  But we could add a custom option to allow for any future date/time.