Messages

I am always curious about where the app is being used.   Believe me, the financial reward for developing the app is pretty minimal.  What makes it worth it, is to see that 8000 teams across the country have found it useful  :)

Thanks for sharing the team website!  That looks very professional...  much better than the ones I have put together for the high school softball team that I coach.

Yes, I am working on the update a couple hours a day right now and should have it completed by the end of the month. 

The functions themselves are working well, but fitting it all into the user interface without cluttering things is taking quite a bit longer than I had hoped.   I also wasted a bunch of time trying to support Apple Music songs, but that ended up requiring too many compromises and workarounds to be acceptable.  iOS forces you to use a very limited and quirky audio player API to access digital rights protected songs and I just couldn't get all the existing features of the walkout song interface to work well enough.  I guess that feature will have to wait until the future iOS update where they make that API acceptable.

Thanks for the note...  I really appreciate your interest!

I am working on it and making reasonable process, but still much to do.   Completion date looks more likely to be after Christmas break or so, but should still be in time for the start of spring ball.

I have the import of mp3 files working and they can be played as walkout songs...  The big work is adding the option to the UI without cluttering things. 

I also investigated a method to play walkout songs from Apple Music offerings, but it requires use of a completely different playback API.  That will be quite a bit of work as well.

Thanks for checking in on it!   Makes it easier to put in the effort when I see interest in the product  :D

Yes, next update is planned for November time frame.  I finish up with coaching High School softball in two weeks so I will have time at that point.

The main theme of the new update will be allowing direct import of songs, sound affects, and player announcements.   Probably also the capability to record them as well.

Once you enable the player announcements...  The app will automatically announce the players name and number that you entered as the walkout song you have chosen for that player fades out.   So just add a player with a name and number, select a walkout song for them, and then tap the play button to the left of the player and you should hear the walkout song play and fade and then the player announcement at the end.   Not much more to it.

You can select a voice for the announcements if you don't like the default.  That option is available from the menu where you enabled the announcement.  You can also speed up or slow down the announcement in that same place because Apple tends to adjust that speech rate with every release of iOS.

There already is a fade/out button to the right of the play/pause button by the song progress indicator.   It is the button that has the thin vertical lines decreasing in size.   Were you aware of that button?

There isn't a button to extend the walkout song and I have experienced a need for that one.  I will add that to the next version feature list and see if I can get that in.

Thanks for the suggestion!

The next release is planned for the late fall.  I try to avoid doing anything major during the prime season to avoid crash bugs and outrage.  This release is planned to include several new features which raises the bug risk quite a bit.

How lame of USSSA...  wouldn't want the games to be fun or anything  ;D

Anyway, that isn't possible yet, but I have already had a request for that feature and I plan to add it to the next release.

For now, You could just pick a really short (.1 second) section of a song for the batter and then slide the gain to zero.  I tried that and it works to just do the announcement.

It is in the plan to make an Android version, but I'm just a one person hobby developer and I haven't had the time available to dig into it yet.  Any announcement of when I make some progress on it will be here or on the facebook page.

Thanks for your interest!

Yes, I suppose the fade time could be configurable...  I will add that to the todo list for future versions.

Thanks for the suggestion!

That sounds possible, but I'm not sure where to fit the new entries and how to keep it simple for the less advanced users.  I will give it some thought and add your requests to the todo list for next version(s).

Thanks again for the suggestions!

For #1, I will have to ponder on that for a bit.  The code for multiple pages used on the walkout part is pretty complex and I'm not sure I like the user experience it presents.  I may chose to rework that mechanism in future versions.  If so, I will keep in mind the option to include the same functionality for the other tabs.

For #2, I should be able to remove the sanity check for a song configured to allow it to just announce the player without playing a walkout song.   The original intention of the app was for playing only walkout songs, but it seems the announcement features has become pretty popular.  I was wondering how users were dealing with the announcing for the visiting team.  Thanks for answering that question and suggesting a pretty good solution.

For #3, I was already planning on adding that.  I am actually planning to add the ability to directly import mp3 songs and sound affects for use as both sounds and player announcements.  A set of basic necessity sound effects would be part of that.  However, that is a pretty drastic change and I prefer to do those type of things in the offseason so as not to introduce crash bugs and instability when the app is most used.   

Look for a major update sometime around the October/November time frame which will probably include #2 and #3.

Thanks for the suggestions... they are always appreciated!

This issue has been reported by a few people, but generally only happens very occasionally. 

So far I have been unable to determine what causes the issue... The app makes a very simple call to an iOS system function with the text to announce and the system takes care of the rest. 

Can you tell me what voice you are using, what model device and what version of iOS?

1   Turn Down For What   -   DJ Snake & Lil Jon
2   Centuries   -   Fall Out Boy
3   All I Do Is Win (feat. T-Pain, Ludacris, Snoop Dogg & Rick Ross)   -   DJ Khaled
4   GDFR (feat. Sage the Gemini & Lookas)   -   Flo Rida
5   Crazy Train   -   Ozzy Osbourne
6   Thunderstruck   -   AC/DC
7   Uptown Funk (feat. Bruno Mars)   -   Mark Ronson
8   My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark (Light Em Up)   -   Fall Out Boy
9   Hall of Fame (feat. will.i.am)   -   The Script
10   The Man   -   Aloe Blacc
11   Back In Black   -   AC/DC
12   Radioactive   -   Imagine Dragons
13   Enter Sandman   -   Metallica
14   Boom   -   P.O.D.
15   Remember the Name (feat. Styles of Beyond)   -   Fort Minor
16   Lose Yourself   -   Eminem
17   All About That Bass   -   Meghan Trainor
18   Eye Of The Tiger   -   Survivor
19   Welcome to the Jungle   -   Guns N' Roses
20   Bad to the Bone   -   George Thorogood & The Destroyers
21   My House   -   Flo Rida
22   T.N.T.   -   AC/DC
23   We Own It (Fast & Furious)   -   2 Chainz & Wiz Khalifa
24   Sail   -   AWOLNATION
25   Centerfield   -   John Fogerty
26   Fancy (feat. Charli XCX)   -   Iggy Azalea
27   I Can't Stop   -   Flux Pavilion
28   Jump Around   -   House Of Pain
29   Happy (from "Despicable Me 2")   -   Pharrell Williams
30   This Is How We Roll (feat. Luke Bryan)   -   Florida Georgia Line
31   We Will Rock You   -   Queen
32   U Can't Touch This   -   MC Hammer
33   Watch Me (Whip / Nae Nae)   -   Silento
34   Can't Hold Us (feat. Ray Dalton)   -   Macklemore & Ryan Lewis
35   Roar   -   Katy Perry
36   Shell Shocked (feat. Kill the Noise & Madsonik) [From "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles"]   -   Juicy J, Wiz Khalifa & Ty Dolla $ign
37   Shake It Off   -   Taylor Swift
38   Come With Me Now   -   KONGOS
39   Animals   -   Maroon 5
40   Fireball (feat. John Ryan)   -   Pitbull
41   Trophies (feat. Drake)   -   Young Money
42   Dark Horse (feat. Juicy J)   -   Katy Perry
43   Hells Bells   -   AC/DC
44   Seven Nation Army   -   The White Stripes
45   Watch Me (Whip / Nae Nae)   -   Silent

You make good points that I hadn't thought of.   I assumed that most people would pick a default duration for those and stick with it and then adjust individual songs by using the cue/duration selector page.   

I should be able to keep a flag somewhere that indicates whether an individual song duration has changed from the default since it was created and then adjust all of the ones that haven't been changed from the default whenever a change is made to the default.

I will make a note of that for the next update...  thanks for the suggestion!