Wii Countdown

[Doomulation]

Well, I have no interest in the Wii - I lost interest in Nintendo's stuff long ago, there are just never enough games I want to play for their consoles, that's all there is to it.

But hopefully the rest of you enjoy waving your arms in the air and all that other weird stuff that you'll have to do to play with your Wii Wii.

Stop your lame jokes about the Wii.
And just because you haven't liked Nintendo in the past doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a chance now. I agree with Scott - you ARE pathetic. Sorry for saying that.

kill it via taskmanager? Can't you just use the applications terminate function to kill it Doom? Shouldn't stay on anyway. Date counting isn't hard doom, use CTime, let me elabourate: CTime is extremely accurate as its the number of seconds since 1970 or something like that but anyway lots of things use it.

I know it shouldn't have to be done like that, but otherwise I have to add a tray icon, which I'm too lazy to do right now.
And actually, if you do think about it, date counting IS hard. Especially the month concept. Let me show the code so that you better understand what's going on. And btw, since this is a Win32 App, MFC isn't allowed. Stupid MS.

UINT64 Today, Target, TimeLeft;
FILETIME FileTimeToday, FileTimeTarget;
SYSTEMTIME SystemTimeToday, SystemTimeTarget;
int nYears, nMonths = 0, nDays, nHours, nMinutes, nSeconds, nDaysThisMonth;

GetSystemTimeAsFileTime(&FileTimeToday);
FileTimeToLocalFileTime(&FileTimeToday, &FileTimeToday);
FileTimeToSystemTime(&FileTimeToday, &SystemTimeToday);
Today = FileTimeToday.dwLowDateTime + ((UINT64)FileTimeToday.dwHighDateTime << 32);

SystemTimeTarget.wDay = 17;
SystemTimeTarget.wDayOfWeek = 0;
SystemTimeTarget.wHour = 0;
SystemTimeTarget.wMilliseconds = 0;
SystemTimeTarget.wMinute = 0;
SystemTimeTarget.wMonth = 11;
SystemTimeTarget.wSecond = 0;
SystemTimeTarget.wYear = 2006;
SystemTimeToFileTime(&SystemTimeTarget, &FileTimeTarget);
//FileTimeToLocalFileTime(&FileTimeTarget, &FileTimeTarget);
Target = FileTimeTarget.dwLowDateTime + ((UINT64)FileTimeTarget.dwHighDateTime << 32);

TimeLeft = Target - Today;

nYears = (int)(TimeLeft / TimePerYear);
TimeLeft -= nYears * TimePerYear;
nDays = (int)(TimeLeft / TimePerDay);
TimeLeft -= nDays * TimePerDay;
nHours = (int)(TimeLeft / TimePerHour);
TimeLeft -= nHours * TimePerHour;
nMinutes = (int)(TimeLeft / TimePerMinute);
TimeLeft -= nMinutes * TimePerMinute;
nSeconds = (int)(TimeLeft / TimePerSecond);

while (SystemTimeToday.wMonth <= SystemTimeTarget.wMonth)
{
	SystemTimeToday.wMonth++;
	nDaysThisMonth = DaysForThisMonth(SystemTimeToday.wMonth, SystemTimeToday.wYear);
	if (nDays - nDaysThisMonth < 0) continue;
	nDays -= nDaysThisMonth;
	nMonths++;
}

How do I indeed convert the number of seconds / minutes / hours / days / whatever to months? That's a good question.
And when counting dates you need to take into account the one extra day every 4 years, which causes bumps in the road, too.

 

[ScottJC]

That's a problem I had in the past as well, until I discovered CTime, which counts leap years as well quite efficiently. It is the unix timestamp and it counts from january 1st 1970. If you call ctime it will give you the number of seconds since then and that gives you something to work with. I don't understand how it counts but it works every time I use it. I've used it for IRC bots before.

Now if you add the number of seconds till the Wii's launch, you can then compare ctime to your higher value you got from adding to ctime. And if TimeToReach - Ctime is less than 0 the date has arrived. If its greater than 0 you have the number of seconds until the date. Which you can then convert into Days, hours and minutes.

CTime rocks. I'm not sure what language your quote is in but it looks like visual basicish, should be able to find a way to do ctime in it. I can do it in delphi.

 

[Doomulation]

Lol, you don't recognize C++?
If I get the time left in SECONDS, I'll be in the same spot as I am now. The above example extracts the time is 100th of nanoseconds to the target date.
Which I then convert into seconds, minutes, hours, days and lastly, months.
Here are the constants used for the calculation:

	const time_t TimePerMilliSecond = 10000;
	const time_t TimePerSecond = TimePerMilliSecond * 1000;
	const time_t TimePerMinute = TimePerSecond * 60;
	const time_t TimePerHour = TimePerMinute * 60;
	const time_t TimePerDay = TimePerHour * 24;
	const time_t TimePerYear = TimePerDay * 365;

 

[ScottJC]

Yes but Ctime is extremely accurate, it doesn't miss leap years, it knows the EXACT date and times to the second, theres no need to do that Timeleft * yearsleft crap like you've got in that code of yours.

Let me show you an example.

The CTime for me now at 13:54 is 1159707261
now, lets say I want to know the exact amount of seconds till midnight, What I do is find out what ctime is at midnight. Not going to be too accurate here so I just add ten hours to 1159707261, which is 1159707261 + 36000. Which is 1159743261.

1159743261 is my base ctime, so if i call CTime again and subtract it from 1159743261, I'll get 35861 (at the time of writing), see how it works? Basically you're doing a certain amount of math to find out the CTime of wii's launch compared to your timezone. Theres not much math involved.

(Did the same thing again, now 35786 is the time) And all I do is convert that into hours, minutes and seconds which is much easier and much more accurate than the way you're doing it.

Here's how I do it in mIRC script language:

/meh {
%x = $ctime(8th dec 2006)
%y = $calc(%x - $ctime)
echo The wii version of Zelda will be released in the UK in: $duration(%y)
}

Now if I type /meh, it gives me in mIRC the result: The wii version of Zelda will be released in the UK in: 9wks 5days 1hr
THAT IS PRETTY ACCURATE

See? Much easier than what you're doing (i'm sure theres a similar way to do that in c++). Just to avoid confusion, $duration converts seconds to weeks, days and hours in a string; It doesn't do anything else. Like dividing it by the number of seconds in a week.

 

[Doomulation]

No, either you don't get it or you're not reading the code properly.
What I do is get today's time and convert it to file time (which counts 100-interval of nanoseconds since 1601).
Then I create the target date (17th of november in this case) and convert it to file time.
Then I subtract the target date (17th of november) from today's date a voila! I got the time left, in 100th of nanoseconds! Then I can convert that time in seconds, minutes, hours, days and months.

Like you suggest.

 

[ScottJC]

If that's what you do I doubt you have any leap year stuff to worry about, sounds quite similar to what i'm doing with ctime to me. Besides, doesn't matter if its completely accurate, its only two months away so it really doesn't matter if its off by a few seconds. Tbh I just assumed you were doing it the way I used to, never really looked at the code much haha, hence the mistakes.

Anyway, as long as it works... yay - good work, just need to fix that having to kill with task manager thing. I might build my own countdown app in delphi (Which is pascal driven)... interesting chat with you about programming though doom. C++ just generally escapes me, that GUI stuff in c++ is too how can I put this, confusing.

 

[smegforbrain]

Welcome to my ignore list.

Guess what, nobody cares.

Stop your lame jokes about the Wii.
And just because you haven't liked Nintendo in the past doesn't mean you shouldn't give it a chance now. I agree with Scott - you ARE pathetic. Sorry for saying that.

Jesus christ, some of you are so uptight you could turn coal into diamonds.

Don't like the jokes? Blame Nintendo; are you telling me you didn't cringe when you heard it? You guys are a riot.

I'm not sitting here saying I wish Nintendo would disappear; obviously they're going to have success, but I've been doubtful about this "revolutionary" game play from the start. As I read in an article another day, the "carpal tunnel" syndrome could morph into something else, or it could end up giving people the best exercise in months.

 

[ScottJC]

Haha, I couldn't resist taking a peek at that post after what doom said - it proved his point you are pathetic, all you've done lately is attack people or troll, me especially because I said something about the HD-DVD addon you obviously didn't like. Ironic considering your thread was pretty much saying the addon was a bad thing and I was actually agreeing with you at first.

At least i'm not sad enough to carry on my disputes whenever I see people post that I dislike - i'm not talking about this thread, the Banjo-Kazooie thread is more like what i'm on about, it was obvious you were attacking me because of what I said about HD-DVD there. When I saw the trolling you were doing here I just decided that I was sick of you, and judging by Doom's responce he's sick of you as well.

You better watch out smeg because mods will take notice of your behaviour eventually, not mine because you are an immature prick and i'm not. Nobody cares that I put you on ignore? You do otherwise you wouldn't have responded. Doesn't matter, I am a jerk but at least I know when i'm wrong, and this aint one of those times. Maybe you deserve the title "Super Jerk" not me smeg.

Now, write up an incredibly long reply you think is really witty (which will turn out really stupid and immature) and prove me and doom even more right. From this point on, your posts are being completely ignored, I won't even be tempted to click "View Post" and that way I'll be happier, no more feeding of the troll (thats you) by me.

 

[Doomulation]

Don't like the jokes? Blame Nintendo; are you telling me you didn't cringe when you heard it? You guys are a riot.

For **** sake! Just because something is named Wii doesn't mean you should attack it make lame jokes about it. Just because it's a childish word in US English does NOT mean it's a childish word in OTHER languages. GROW UP. I don't think it's a great name but do I go around making childish comments about it? NO!

I'm not sitting here saying I wish Nintendo would disappear; obviously they're going to have success, but I've been doubtful about this "revolutionary" game play from the start. As I read in an article another day, the "carpal tunnel" syndrome could morph into something else, or it could end up giving people the best exercise in months.

Yeah? You haven't even tried it and already you're dismissing it as crap just because it doesn't have your standard controllers. Well, maybe we should put it this way - if this works, then it's here to stay, so get used to it.

And I think you, as the main attacker, should now stop polluting this thread with your childish views. And we shall leave you to your childish thoughts.

 

[smegforbrain]

Now, write up an incredibly long reply you think is really witty (which will turn out really stupid and immature) and prove me and doom even more right..

The only thing proven here is why you've got the title 'Super Jerk'. So, there's nothing more to be said.

From this point on, your posts are being completely ignored,

Well, you've already proven you can't do that the first time, so I expect nothing to change down the road.

Just because it's a childish word in US English does NOT mean it's a childish word in OTHER languages.

Then what does it mean in other languages? I've seen nothing to date that indicates that the name was chosen because of anything in Japanese.

I'm sorry, but part of good advertising is knowing your audiences. They knew that people would scratch their heads not only over the name change, but what they changed the name to.

Nintendo has earned a reputation as being 'kiddie', whether deserved or not. This will NOT help that reputation.

I actually liked the name Revolution, and it was appropriate considering the controller.

Yeah? You haven't even tried it and already you're dismissing it as crap just because it doesn't have your standard controllers.

Hmm. I haven't dismissed it as crap; or if I have, it certainly isn't because of the controllers. I've talked with some folks who are into gaming, and some people are intrigued by the controllers, some are not.

Have I had the chance to see it first hand? Well, no, and I'm sure most of us haven't. But expectations based on past experience is a solid enough foundation to work from.

Well, maybe we should put it this way - if this works, then it's here to stay, so get used to it.

Didn't I say that it would be successful? Nintendo, for all their faults, knows how to make a console and how to sell it. I thought they would've been dead and gone long ago, but they survive.

 

[Doomulation]

Finally, at least you bring up valid points.

Then what does it mean in other languages? I've seen nothing to date that indicates that the name was chosen because of anything in Japanese.

In Japanese - no word that I know of. In swedish, nothing.
They chose the name because its similarity to "we" and the "i"s because of connectivity. That makes "Wii," which, unfortunaly, means something bad in US.
They may have based it on english because it's pretty much a standard language.

I'm sorry, but part of good advertising is knowing your audiences. They knew that people would scratch their heads not only over the name change, but what they changed the name to.

I can't agree on that. If you can't get over a name then you're thick-headed and stupid. No exceptions. And there IS nothing wrong with the name. Seeing it on (or as) a logo does not automatically make you think it's a lame childish joke name. It's a perfectly legit name.

Hmm. I haven't dismissed it as crap; or if I have, it certainly isn't because of the controllers. I've talked with some folks who are into gaming, and some people are intrigued by the controllers, some are not.

Have I had the chance to see it first hand? Well, no, and I'm sure most of us haven't. But expectations based on past experience is a solid enough foundation to work from.

But you ARE implying that are not a fan of the controller and that you will not purchase the revolution because you may think it's not fun to wave your arms around.
When you have the chance - try it. If you don't like it, that's OK, but don't dismiss it just because of the controller when you haven't even tried it.

 

[smegforbrain]

I can't agree on that.

Well, we'll just have to agree to disagree.

But you ARE implying that are not a fan of the controller and that you will not purchase the revolution because you may think it's not fun to wave your arms around.

I was likely never going to purchase the Wii regardless because I all but gave up on Nintendo long ago. As it is, the last time I owned more than one 'current' console at a time was during the SNES/Genesis days, and the plan is to get a PS3 down the road; until then, I've got plenty of PS2 games to hold me over.

Much of my general distaste toward owning Nintendo's consoles is, as I said, because of a lack of games that I'm interested in. I have 50 or so PS2 games (some of which were cross platform to Nintendo's consoles), but I'm not sure I could pick out 50 games between the N64 and GameCube that I'd really want.

But I give Nintendo credit: their strategy has worked, against the expectations of many, myself included

When you have the chance - try it. If you don't like it, that's OK, but don't dismiss it just because of the controller when you haven't even tried it.

I'll readily admit that trying to change from the 'standard controller' is hard, but it's also a testament to how well those controllers work, whether it's an old NES controller, SNES, Playstation, N64, etc. I've never really had the chance to use an XBox controller, but I did like N64 controller.

I honestly think that this shift with the Wii's controller could be difficult for a lot gamers to accept, because change IS hard. That, and as one fellow I talked to when watching a preview of the Wii controller in action said, some folks 'just want to play a video game'. I must admit that I too just want to play a video game. But time will tell.

 

[ScottJC]

Moving on from pointless arguing, we all need to drop it, i'm tired of arguing so i'd prefer to get on with things. If you're willing to drop it smeg so am I. Same with you doom. Really? where is this getting us? Either way the arguing has to stop. This has been going on for days in multiple threads and members like me and doom, and you smeg should know better. Keep up the arguing if you wish but at least i've made an effort to stop it with this post. Emutalk isn't pleasent when members are bickering about stupid irrelevant things.

Anyway back on topic, i've created my own countdown app doom, decided to go a little fancier and combine it with some graphics I made in Macromedia Flash, imported to Delphi and draw it onto TImage's every 250ms with a timer.

I'm going to finish this thing later today (or tomorrow) and allow you to put custom dates in for it to countdown to. I've even attached a zip file with all the graphics i'm using in this app (dunno, might be useful heh, quite fancy numbers)

Images:

 

[ScottJC]

Bah, I couldn't leave this thing for very long, started coding again about two hour agos and finally I'm done! *yay*

Introducing, ScottJC's super deluxe countdown app (Ok its not that great). You can enter your own dates for it to count down to, it minimizes to tray and it alerts you with a message box when the date arrives (I'll add some kind of sound launch later).

How to use, well just open it - you might notice its set to countdown to my birthday right now, unless you really want it to count to then all you have to do is double click anywhere on the window and it shows you the "sandbox" mode. Enter whatever you like but be warned, I did put in a small amount of error checking. Give your countdown a title and then click OK.

I've put a comedy one in and will show you a screenshot of it at the end of the post, but otherwise it looks like the screenshots in my above post. The program uses 24 hour clock btw, no AM/PM stuff. Program remembers the countdown so if you close it and bring it back up it'll still be counting down, or if the countdown has passed it will immediately tell you that time has passed.

Program attached, enjoy! (The programs icon is a bit shit btw, I can't draw icons to save myself.) I tested the 2038 thing on it because my program uses ctime to do its calculations, I put 2099 in and it seemed fine, only 93 years 16 weeks... to go - If anyone wants to give it a facelift you can find the graphics set I use in my above post, just edit those pics and post em here and i'll put em in my proggie/

edit: Attached a rebuild of it with a 500ms timer and quite a few steps to make sure it only draws the image when it has to, in other words so it doesn't keep drawing "00" years.

Get the exe in my next post (after the next one)

 

[t0rek]

Who hasn't argued with Scott lately after all?

 

[ScottJC]

Try my countdown app, forget about arguing i'm not doing that anymore.

 

[Doomulation]

Hey, are you trying to steal my glory? lain:
I can do that, too :teehee:
Anyway, it would be nice if it didn't pop up invalid date every 500 ms and not letting me do anything. I just extracted and ran your app.

 

[ScottJC]

Your app doesn't run on my system either, probably because my app trys to use DD/MM/YYYY and if you have MM/DD/YYYY date system that would explain that... I can probably fix that. I'll look it up, I knew it was a possibility but I kinda doubted it until now. Guess my app only works if you live in the UK haha, ok I'll fix it, gimme a little bit...

 

[Doomulation]

Nah, I use DD/MM/YY. I just hate American standards. That includes MM/DD/YY and AM/PM.
Aside from that, why does my app not work? Details, please. I'm updating it now.

 

[ScottJC]

Go back to my last post and try out my new exe I just uploaded. As for your app it says application configuration error, date formatting? its the operating systems date format i'm concerned about not the one you use. Bugger it never mind I think I just uploaded the wrong exe.

Edit: Here's the right one, sorry haha.