SystemClock - local time in-game on a customizable clock!

[formal osprey]

🕓 SystemClock adds a draggable, resizable, customizable clock to the game screen.

https://github.com/Breezebuilder/SystemClock/

It includes 5 editable presets and supports a variety of time formats, UI styles, and color options.

Keep track of time - don't fall into the Black Hole.

SystemClock only requires Lovely, but supports Steamodded's MODS menu for convenience.

Previous thread here: https://discord.com/channels/1116389027176787968/1337300709602754611

Get the latest release here:
https://github.com/Breezebuilder/SystemClock/releases/

[wanton veldt]

give me this right now omg???

(messaging here so the thread shows up for later)

the one trick casinos don't want you to know!

• bring a clock

[formal osprey]

Or a sledgehammer to "install" a window in the nearest wall

[wanton veldt]

or bring zero money so you can't gamble it 😤

or bring debt so you can lose that 😤

[hollow wyvern]

I would like to change the credit to use my actual alternative username instead of server nickname 💀
also typo 💀💀💀

[formal osprey]

Absolutely! Thanks again for your translations, i'll include them in the next update.

So sorry for the typo, I just noticed! Also apologies for assuming the name, I should have asked how you would have liked to be credited

[formal osprey]

Would you also be able to provide translations for "Show in game" and "Show in menus"?

[hollow wyvern]

"Xem trong trận" and "Xem trong menu"

[hollow abyss]

I was wondering in the future do you think we can get the option to have it do what ante does and have a title above it?

[hollow wyvern]

I forgor to mention

the preset I gave doesn't fit well in 16:9 screens

[formal osprey]

Sure, i can include that. Just "Time" for the heading?

[formal osprey]

Do you mean with the height of the window in the description tab being different from the height of the config?

Or is it the default placement of the clock in-game thats the problem?

[hollow abyss]

Yes please

[formal osprey]

Could you send a screenshot of how it looks on your machine? I'm also using a 16:9 display and thought screen coordinates were consistent between computers, but macOS might be doing curious things

[hollow wyvern]

on Windows it gets partially obscured
Mac screens (especially MacBook Pro's) are 16:10 instead

[formal osprey]

Oh, i understand what you mean now. All good! I used a variant of your submission for Preset 2 with a smaller text size and basic styling:

Which should be fine on all systems because the minimum view area is based on 16:9 proportions, so wider aspect ratios add additional area on the sides, and narrower aspects add space top and bottom

[hollow wyvern]

I've never been in such an intensive brainstorming session

apparently, I'm finding a way to make my Vietnamese mod no longer depend on smods, all thanks to SystemClock's migration out of it in v1.6.0

[formal osprey]

If you don't need to load assets from within your mod folder, Lovely can handle pretty much everything else. Fewer dependencies are usually better, and the less mods that have full system read/write access, the better.

[formal osprey]

With that said though, i wouldn't recommend copying my locale module for your Vietnamese mod if you want other mods to be able to use your translation keys. You probably want to add all the the translation keys into the localization full table so that localize()works

Apart from that, i think it's pretty well structured and fine to use as a template

[formal osprey]

I should probably do this too, in case anyone wants to learn from my mod or for other mods that might want to access my translation keys

[hollow wyvern]

I did notice that
localize() is a lot more complicated

I published v1.3.0 that pretty much adds preliminary (but unstable) support for non-smods installation

[hollow wyvern]

well, the thing is
unlike SystemClock (works fine as a standalone), VietnameseBalatro has cross-mod connections since I've localized some of the well-known mods like Cryptid and Ortalab (and they all require smods)
I'm just adding non-smods method as the last resort for those stubborn enough to refuse smods at all costs
another thing: smods handles loc files in localization folder inside the parent mod folder itself, while pure Lovely handles them in localization folder outside "Mods" 💀

[formal osprey]

I added the new style on the latest dev branch, let me know if it's anything like what you were thinking. I refactored the style system so it'll be a lot easier to tweak and add new variants in the future

I'm considering making a deeper UI-customisation mod if I find myself with a lot of free time for development (depending on which direction my career goes in the next couple of weeks), but if i follow through with it then i'd like to make all UI elements rearrangable, which would also support placing the clock within any ui panel.

[hollow abyss]

Thank you! I’ll try it out as soon as I can!

[formal osprey]

New style, new colours, a new Always Show feature, a bunch of tiny fixes, and as much juice and polish as I could possibly cram into one little clock
https://github.com/Breezebuilder/SystemClock/releases/tag/v1.7.0

[hollow abyss]

i like how you named it Throwback

it speaks to me

[formal osprey]

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and naming things is hard

[hollow abyss]

I don’t blame you, I name nearly every oc of mine after an alcoholic drink

[formal osprey]

New patch release to fix various crashes when loading malformed or corrupted config files.
https://github.com/Breezebuilder/SystemClock/releases/tag/v1.7.1

This also improves parsing of values from the config file, so if you ever wanted to use extremely specific custom colours, or wanted your clock to display the date (?!) or show the time in an unusual format, those can all now be defined in the %AppData%/Balatro/config/SystemClock.jkr file

Clock colours can be arrays in the format { r, g, b } or { r, g, b, a }, or hexadecimal strings in the format "#rrggbb" or "#rrggbbaa"
Clock formats should be a string formatted in a way that can be parsed by Lua's os.date function, but any text is valid

[formal osprey]

This also allows SystemClock to double as a label-maker... for... some reason

[formal osprey]

On second thoughts, this might be the greatest feature i've ever added

[unreal beacon]

Can you do multiple boxes?

[formal osprey]

Nope, just the one. Multiple clocks on-screen feels a little excessive, and would require a complete overhaul of a bunch of the config and ui systems

[hollow abyss]

If you could, I would totally suggest just have it so there’s a hidden button to just have all presets on screen at once

[formal osprey]

Would you want this as sort of a joke feature, or do you have a genuine use case for this? It would take a fairly large amount of work to overhaul a few features for this

[hollow abyss]

Joke feature

It wouldn’t be worth the effort for a single joke tbh

[formal osprey]

If anyone would like to build their own floating UI panel, most of the backbone of SystemClock's clockUI is formed by DraggableContainer which is an extension of UIBox that has gone through multiple stages of development by Toeler, MathIsFun0 and I, and is in a very usable state as a drop-in module.

Toeler originally developed it as MoveableContainer with a large number of additional features for his HandPreview mod. MathIsFun0 then took an axe to it and cut it down to its minimal parts for use in Ankh Speedrun Tmer, which I then overhauled and built upon. It's possible that there are no lines of code left from Toeler's mod, but credit where it's due.
It can display child popups on hover provided in args.h_popup, can respond to mouse-hover and drag events in the same dynamic way that cards and sprites do with juice and zoom effects, and will work dynamically with other menus while paused.

clock_ui.reset() in src/clock_ui.lua provides an example of how it can be used. A mod that allows for custom popups with editable text probably wouldn't be too difficult, it's just not something I feel like spending time on right now

[hard island]

@formal ospreyinteresting interpretation of 'sky blue'

[formal osprey]

Sky blue is mapped to G.C.SECONDARY_SET.Planet which usually looks like this. Since you've changed the colour the names won't match up

[hard island]

ohhh

that makes sense

[formal osprey]

I did briefly consider writing a system to interpret the colour and name it accordingly while I was supporting Trance's font system, but it's not a trivial problem when also supporting 16 languages, haha

[hard island]

why not copy_table(G.C.SECONDARY_SET) before anything else can touch it and then pull from wherever you put that instead, so that no other mods can interfere with the colours unless they specifically patch it

then again, you don't really normally expect G.C.SECONDARY_SET to be interfered with

although this is... kinda detached? from everything else

it's not like it's specifically tied to the normal use of the colour for any purpose other than "it's there"
it's used in a completely different context

[formal osprey]

My original goal was to support Trance and stay consistent with whatever custom colour theme users wanted to define in that. That meant the names wouldn't match up, but the colours would translate in a consistent way and meant that people who want to go to the trouble of using custom colour themes would have the colour theming consistent.

[hard island]

ahhh

[formal osprey]

It's less about exact colours and more about respecting the palette of the game

[formal osprey]

I might do something like this in a future update though. The last update overhauled the colour parsing in the config system, so people can define whatever custom colours they want in a different way.
I might instead hardcode the colour table, check for differences between the hardcoded table and the current colour, and change the display name when they don't match

It would require a custom cycle implementation, but i've had ideas about that for a while now anyway

[ebon prairie]

can the mod adds a customizable (countdown) timer? just wondering

[formal osprey]

I'm happy to give it a try, though it'll take some rethinking and reengineering to add it as a full-fledged and polished feature. I won't make promises on an eta, but i'll set aside some time in the next week or two and see how I go.
Any specific feature requests about how you'd like to use or set the countdown timer? Would milliseconds be necessary?

[ebon prairie]

milliseconds are good in stopwatches, one might not want to set it in countdown timers

[formal osprey]

Much easier to not implement support for milliseconds, since os.time doesn't

[formal osprey]

Out of curiosity, what's your use case? Pomodoro-style study break timer or something?

[ebon prairie]

break timer, game performance evaluator, or just simply a notification timer, you name it

although it might be niche to be implemented i get it

[formal osprey]

Nah, not much more niche than a clock, really. The number of comments I've seen in #🎙・server-chat and #🕹・game-discussion of people seeing it in screenshots and saying "wtf why u hav clock 😭 💀" have made that pretty clear, haha

[ebon prairie]

Lol, that's quite fascinating

[ebon gorge]

is there a way for the mod to tell you how long you spent on a run when you finish the run?

[formal osprey]

https://discord.com/channels/1116389027176787968/1209916317604511814 might be better suited for that

[ebon gorge]

interesting, thank you

[hard island]

interestingly, systemclock doesn't seem to "realise" that i've overwritten the colour with something else until i open the config menu

might be where it's pulling from the table before my mod makes the change and then when i open the config menu, does so again, updating it. interesting effect

see here where i have a set colour for tarot

[formal osprey]

@short mist Sorry for the ping, but is this you?
https://thunderstore.io/c/balatro/p/Chimera/

[short mist]

Hi! This is in fact not me! I'll always go as "ChimeraDev"

[formal osprey]

Ah, sorry to bother you then, your message and join dates just seemed similar

I'm trying to track them down because they've posted a version of SystemClock to Thunderstore which they've edited and broken, then disappeared...

[formal osprey]

🕛

[ebon gorge]

heyo, i really like how you made a draggable container and want to use a very similar thing for my mod

do you mind if i use your code as a template for the thing i want to display

[formal osprey]

Absolutely, it's all licensed under GPLv3 and free to use. Check out this message for the Draggable_Container module in particular #1343505857870172210 message

[ebon gorge]

awesome, yeah i know about the license but didnt want to straight rip it without asking for permission

tysm :)

[formal osprey]

Feel free to ping or message me if you have any questions about any of the totally-uncommented modules.
My main goal was to maximise compatibility and interfere with as little as possible, so all the parts are loaded as modules by Lovely, with no destructive or replacing patches to any Balatro or Steamoddded code. None of the hooks in src/core.lua are necessary for the basic functionality either, they're all clock-related or config-related. I think everything you'll need is in lovely/modules.toml, src/clock_ui.lua and src/draggable_container.lua

[ebon gorge]

youre a legend, i appreciate all the work you put into this, i did have a question about Dynatext, how does it work exactly? my assumption for its use case is the time changing every second hence it needs to be dynamically updated, but if my code has 3 specific places where the text would change, do i need dynatext? or is there a way for me to call a function to update text

[formal osprey]

If you have a UI element with text that needs to change or do the fancy Balatro jumping and wobbling text, DynaText is by far the easiest way to do it. It's essentially a Moveable that contains text that draws itself, along with a lot of extra cleverness for text effects. They do all update once per frame though, so be aware that there's a performance hit to adding many of them.
Check the create_clock_DynaText() function for a usage example, it's just a matter of defining a DynaText object, and a UIT.O object containing that DynaText.

I didn't come across any parts of the Balatro code that try and recalculate a UIT.T type node after its creation - I think all changing text is either DynaText objects self-updating, or the entire parent UI element being destroyed and recreated

[ebon gorge]

gotcha okay that makes sense, ill go over the code, thanks so much once again

:)

[hollow abyss]

@formal osprey Can I see if i could borrow some of your code for grabbing the month and day?

[formal osprey]

The Lua docs for os.timeos.date might be more helpful for you, I didn't do anything with month/date.
https://www.lua.org/pil/22.1.html
Current month should be

tonumber(os.date('%m'))
``` and current day of the month should be
```lua
tonumber(os.date('%d'))

[hollow abyss]

oh, thank you!

[formal osprey]

I might be getting my usages mixed up, hold on

Yep, sorry, it's os.date rather than os.time, i should have actually checked the docs i linked

[hollow abyss]

lol, fair, thanks again lol

[formal osprey]

🕐

[tepid gale]

right clicking the clock in a run to open the menu for it instantly crashes

[formal osprey]

Looks like Steamodded has made a breaking change to the config menu system. I'll check it out and make a fix tonight when i get home. In the meantime, could you try Steamodded 0711?

[tepid gale]

yeah 0711a works

[formal osprey]

Thanks for letting me know!

[formal osprey]

I've submitted a PR to SMODS to prevent the crash, since it's a very simple regression. If it doesn't get merged then I can release a patch for SystemClock, but I'd prefer not to go through the hassle just yet

[lucid bobcat]

I’ll merge it when I’m back at my pc later

[formal osprey]

Thanks mate! PR #823 for reference

[frozen portal]

what aboot analog clocks?

[formal osprey]

I've considered doing it in the past mostly as a fun challenge, even though it wouldn't realistically be used by many people. I don't have a huge amount of free time right now, but maybe one day i'll have a tinker and see if i can get something basic working

[little grove]

dragging a slider has some janky behavior when trying to make slight adjustments to the clock's position
i suspect it might have something to do with the menu ui bobbing up and down per balatro's ui engine

[formal osprey]

Yeah, I found it a bit temperamental too. I considered making a separate number-input field for it too but never got around to it. As a workaround, if you want an exact value you can edit the config file (%AppData%/Balatro/config/SystemClock.jkr). No need to restart the game either, i wrote it so that it'll reload from file whenever you switch presets

[hollow wyvern]

🕛 🪰