How can I create an increasing bar counter?

[schrodinger]

Oh, if you want to change elapsed time, use this formula:

single counter solution: set maximum value to 60*total seconds
three counters solution: (obviously) set each counter's maximum value to (60*total seconds) / 3

[schrodinger]

Thanks for checking Snail!
I generally prefer counters over actives for this kind of jobs due to the built-in gradient effect,
that gives a sense of "approaching to full/empty",
to achieve a similar effect within actives you'd have to setup a routine for "cutting" it (-->active picture)
because scaling would also scale the gradient image.

@ Emerson3: I woke up this morning with another example in mind already built ,
and I've now added to the ones above, so here it is:

counter-1.mfa

Gives a nice snake/"powder keg" effect,
and decreasing from full gives a harder tragic sense of panic, rather than increasing from 0 !

This example also led me to notice that,
while refreshing every 0.01 seconds the timers/counters keeps on par with real time (and debugger time)
---meaning that at 60 fps on each frame real time grows by 1/60=0.01666666... seconds---
doing so each 1 second causes a noticeable lag between the timer and real time!
Thus I would assume that every 1 second is not a reliable timing event on the long run?
(see example)
Maybe altering fps could fix this, but I've not tested.

(Emerson you can obviously neglect this issue for your application )

[Emerson3]

Hey Schro,

I used the one counter example set at 2400 max. I created event "Every 0.3 add 1 to counter. Its working great. I just saw your last message so I'm excited to get home and check out the new example. I'm going to post my MFA file so you can see it in action. Hee-Haw!!!

[mobichan]

I find the active approach to give more flexibility on the visual style of the bar. You can paint your own gradient, which won't get stretched if you make the bar the right thickness from the start. You only scale on one axis, so nothing would be distorted, unless you wanted the gradient to go along the length of the bar. But with an active, you can animate the bar, which allows for flashing or other effects like an animated gradient. But to each his own.

[Emerson3]

Thanks Snail,

Ya'll are giving me so many examples! Can't wait to get home and check em out!

[mobichan]

Snail: that was my point about this not working if the gradient followed the length of the active. But another solution could be to just scale an active the same color as the bg of the bar over top of the "bar" that is really just concealing/revealing it. In this case, the bar is just a static image. There are certainly a lot of ways to be clever when dealing with bar counter. Thanks for the example. Although it seems way over the top for my own projects, I never thought to use a subtractive blended object. Always interesting to see how others solve problems.