Hello and thanks for your time. If you stumble upon this I'm having a bit of issue and it requires some knowledge with Firebase / Swift and Swift's mapkit. So what I'm trying to do is create an expiring annotation. A user puts a pin on a map and after some amount of time (say 3 hours) the annotation disappears.
I've read about one thing where you can use NSTImer, but the issue is that if the phone is asleep or powered off it might have issues with NSTimer. Instead, I was thinking of using Firebase to save the annotation and use the time stamp to show when the point should expire. I saw another stack overflow post regarding this which involved if / else statements to check when a certain time has passed and to bring remove the data after the time.
The post never explained how to actually do that, and also I'm not actually sure how to create an observer that will easily check if a certain time has passed based on the timestamp. If anyone could create some code or point me in the right direction, would really appreciate it. Thank you!
Related
I'm looking through my newrelic analysis and I'm seeing in almost every case over 60%-70% of my time is spent inside MixedGrailsControllerHelper.executeAction(). I've checked the traces and it's spent in executeAction() after the controller has already handled the action. So it's after invokeAction() has been called, but I can't find any locks that might be holding it up. All the time seems to be spent in executeAction(). No other methods it calls show any significant time spent in them. I am using the MongoDB gorm plugin usually returning JSON data.
So what's the problem?
I'm really quite confused as to how I'm supposed to implement the following app. I have 90% of the code, but the last 10% I can't figure out. I can't figure out how I'm supposed to control the flow of events. I'll describe the app/game first.
The Game
The flow of events happens like this. The user sets the number of teams and the number of rounds. The game will then show a screen saying "Pass to team 1". The player on team 1 then presses a button which pushes on another view.
On this view, the current player tries to describe words/names on the screen to the other players on their team without saying them. Each time someone guesses a word/name correctly, the player presses a button which pulls out more words, and adds 1 to the score for that team. This continues until a timer runs out.
When the timer has ran out, this view will get popped off the navigation controller, and the previous view will tell the player to pass to team 2.
This will loop for the number of teams and the number of rounds.
My Problem
My problem is that I really don't understand how I'm supposed to keep track of all these events. I have a "GameBrain" class where I keep an array of scores and team names etc. but I don't know how to access this from each ViewController.
I asked a similar question earlier and someone suggested a Singleton class, but I've since read that this is bad practice and I can't help but feel that I should be able to do this following the MVC design pattern.
So my question is, how would you guys/girls approach coding a game like this?
Sorry for the kind of vague question. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT: Are delegates the correct way to go? i.e. Would I create the first ViewController that I need from my "GameBrain", set the brain (so self in this case) as the delegate for this instance, and have the ViewController call a "I'm done with this round" method on the brain which would then fire off the next ViewController?
Your GameBrain should be designed as a singleton, singletons may have some bad sides, but in your case they are the best choice, so just go with it
Since this class has to be accessed by all your viewControllers and since there is no need of having multiple instances of this class, then this would fit a singleton perfectly
I started with a comment but moved on to an answer.
In short, as #Omar says, for a quick little thing you describe the Singleton may work fine.
The longer version, several years ago I designed a quick little thing like this and we released it and all was well. Several months later we had several million users and had undergone multiple development phases and the Singleton pattern we had begun with was destroying the project. I might mention that my boss insisted at the beginning it was a small project and we would release it in two weeks and be done - hah, funny guy.
The reason the Singleton did not work well is because it restricted modularity. In the end, everything "game related" had to come back through this class which in turned sent a message to another class which sent a response back to the Singleton etc. etc. It was horrible.
If you have the time/energy, I recommend you create a GameBrain (or whatever) class for each game. This class is usually only ever used in the "game screen" anyway, so why keep it around when you are back in the menu or sending emails? If you need it persistent the make it backed by a database. If you only need it in one or two extra places (your winning screen might need to know who won etc.), just pass it along by reference - you should only need to do it one or two times.
Good luck.
I'm currently working on a new game for iOS using Cocos2D. The game needs to advance states after x amount of time since the first launch. So for example:
State - Time
initial launch
24hrs
48hrs
My first idea was to just get the data and time on first launch and save it to a file. Then I could check it ever now and again to see how much time has passed. The problem with this is I need it to be in realtime so that the changes will take effect immediately once the state is reached. It also needs to continue when the user is not using the app. The functionality I'm looking for is kind of similar to how the iOS strategy games work where you build structures that take x amount of time.
Anyway my question(s) is; is there some sort of library that can accomplish this and how can I get it to continue after the user exits the app?
It can't. There is - apart from kind of misusing video/music playing etc. no way for your app to do work while it is not running.
You have two things you can do to simulate that behavior (and I suppose the strategy games do this, too):
You can calculate at any time while a user is still running your app the points in the future when something should happen (eg a housing structure is finished). When the user leave your app, store these future times as local events - then the user will get notified that something has happened in your game (eg message "The church has been built. Do you want to go to church now?)". Pressing yes will open your app, and you can do whatever is necessary to indeed build the church. So in fact you don't do it at the time when it occurred, but when the user opens your app the next time.
Like 1, but without notification. Just remember when the user leaves the app (eg in your settings, I would use a property list; set it when the app delegate gets the appWillResignActive event), and the next time he starts do whatever would have been done in the meantime - he won't be able to tell the difference :-).
It's all about make believe here :-).
I'm developing a navigation app which uses the UIBackgroundModes=location setting and receives CLLocationManager updates via didUpdateToLocation. That works fine.
The problem is that the intervals between location updates are very hard to predict and I need to make sure the app is called something like once every few seconds to do some other (tiny) amounts of work even if the location did not change significantly.
Can I do that? Am I allowed to do that? And how can I do that?
I found a blog post, but I'm not sure if this is really the way to proceed.
Permissible background operations are pretty limited in scope. You cannot, for example, just leave an NSTimer running to perform some arbitrary code while your application is in the background - so the simple answer to your question is no, you cannot. Definitely read the Apple documentation regarding what is and isn't allowed (most of what's allowed pertains to apps that "need" specific ongoing services, like the ability to play music, or respond to location changes (GPS type apps...). You may be able to construct a viable solution by responding to location or significant location change notifications...
I'm looking for a bit of guidance from anyone who has worked with Core Location on the iPhone. My app is almost complete, I'm just trying to finish off one last thing for my client.
My app is to assist users with their workouts. Similar functionality to MapMyRun. It has a timer screen with a Start/Stop button and a Reset button. When the start button is tapped, the timer starts counting and Core Location starts tracking the users progress, calculating speed and distance. The issue I'm having is with core location trying to find the users current location. Scenario below:
Day 1
User has gone out for a jog and uses the app to track their progress, user has jogged for an hour, workout is saved. Everything works as it should.
Day 2
User decides to go jogging again, this time in a different area than yesterdays jog. Lets say 10 miles away. So they start the timer, but core location takes some time to initialise to the users current position. This causes the distance field to jump irrationally as core location tries to determine the current location.
I've explained why this happens but my client is not very happy, they don't want to see the distance field jump, which is fair enough.
So I'm wondering if anybody has a nice solution to initialising core location to the users current location. I could perhaps break the link between core location and the distance field for a certain period of time which will give core location a chance to get an accurate reading.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Stephen
Stabilise the readings by reporting "calibrating..." until the position readings roughly match the speed readings, which are generally more accurate than position.
Yeah, CoreLocation and the GPS-tracking really can annoy one.
some time ago someone had a quite similar problem and got posted some ideas and code:
CoreLocation
Pherhaps this helps. But still I would show an activityIndicator untill you got your exact location. And it's not like GPS-tracking is a matter of tenth of seconds... Just explain your client by referencing to navigation systems in cars. Pherhaps he will understand then....
Try to find the user current location before going in to the App. So that you can directly show the users current location with out taking much time.