Re: Trying to recreate this in Lingo

[Carl West]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 
> Hi. I'm currently trying to use Lingo to recreate this interactive piece that I 
>found on the internet a while ago -
> 
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/digital/yourwork/a_anthony.shtml
> 
> Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone could help me with creating this, any example code 
>or files would be greatly appreciated (and I'll be forever in your debt!). So far, my 
>attempts have been fairly unsuccessful.

I've got a start at it here:
http://lumpymuffins.home.attbi.com/squares/sensitiveSquares.html

I didn't deal with sound.  You could write an object to keep track of the sounds or 
you could kick a global around to keep track of which channel has the oldest sound in 
it, either to interrupt or to see if it's done. Eight sounds should be more than 
enough to play at one time.

-- 
Carl West   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://eisen.home.attbi.com

I have no superfluous leisure; my stay must be stolen out
of other affairs; but I will attend you awhile.

   - Isabella, Measure for Measure, Act 3 Scene 1
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Re: Imaging vs. Sprites

[pranavn]

Does "grinding halt" mean something sudden like a crash, or is it
rather that performance at one point gradually becomes slower and
slower?


It means the latter...it keeps getting slower gradually.



timeoutObjects that doesn't release their
targetObjects, because of a bug, if you don't initialize them into a
variable.


Thats a new one for me. Can you elaborate?




Or maybe you're allocating memory in such a way that the memory-space
quickly becomes fragmented.
When your memory space is consumed to the point where there is no
more available RAM, virtual memory on the harddisk will typically be
used, and that could seem like a "grinding halt".
Anyway, if you think that memory could be the issue, and you haven't
explored that yet, you should look into things like the
memory-inspector, and lingo such as the freeBytes and the freeBlock.


I always thought that Director managed the memory part on its own and I
didn't really have control over that. How can I see the fragmentation?
Actually, when I'm running the movie in authoring mode and keep the Memory
Inspector open, I see a big leap in the red bar. On stopping, this memory
is not released immediately, but if I click on the Purge button, it gets
cleared considerably. If I play the movie again, the performance is good
again.

Time is a major factor at this moment. If the leak is not causing a very
big problem, I'd rather let it be and think of another way of speeding
things up. Fine tuning can happen later if the demo goes well.


My best bets for the moment seem to be controlling the memory fragmentation
and drawing faster. I think I'll go the imaging way.

Thanks Robert, Jakob.

Pranav Negandhi
Software Engineering
Learnet India Limited, Mumbai.
Phone: 91-22-859 8042 Ext: 316
http://www.learnetindia.com



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mesh blend

[Mike Gralish]

I'm having a problem with a 3d mesh.

It's a simple hard-coded mesh that makes a prism shape.

It shows fine until i set the shader.blend to something besides 100.

When I set the blend to say 90, It will sometimes show pixelated yellow/red,
light blue, white, or not at all.  This toggling happens dynamically when in
the bounding rects of other moving objects.  But it displays poorly even
when soloing in the world.

Once it blended beatifully... until I moved another object close to it, then
the prism went a bright red.   All this with no change in the constructor
code.  Changing the .visiblity (#both, #front, #back) doesn't seem to effect
the blend problem.

Is it mesh magic or am I gorking a parameter somewhere?

Here's the small snippet of constructor code:


meshResource = world.newMesh("prism resource",8,6,0,1,0)
 -- faces, vertices, normals, colors, texture coords
meshResource.colorList = [rgb("00"]

( deleted vertex list and face vertices definitions )

meshResource.generateNormals(#flat)
meshResource.build()
meshObject = world.newModel("prism", meshResource)
meshObject.visibility = #both

meshShader = (world.newshader("mesh shd"),#standard)
meshShader.texture = void

meshObject.shaderList = meshShader



Thanks for any insight.

Mike








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Re: Shockwave filename of member

[Buzz Kettles]

At 12:17 PM +1300 1/6/03, you wrote:

Hi!
I'm trying to use the filename of member command to switch between 
pictures in a shockwave movie, when I preview it in the browser 
everything is working fine but when I download the files in my 
server only the first image comes out in the browser.

where did you download them to?

Did you use the preLoadNetThing() to get them down?

-Buzz


At the beginning I could not seen any pictures but after I have 
converted the pictures from pict to jpg format I've been able to see 
the first picture but I cannot still see the others.
I have also used transictions between pictures, are they going to 
work on shockwave?

Does anyone know what should be the problem?

Thanks

Teo
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Re: Trying to recreate this in Lingo

[Buzz Kettles]

At 9:57 AM -0500 1/7/03, you wrote:

Hi. I'm currently trying to use Lingo to recreate this interactive 
piece that I found on the internet a while ago -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/digital/yourwork/a_anthony.shtml

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone could help me with creating this, 
any example code or files would be greatly appreciated (and I'll be 
forever in your debt!). So far, my attempts have been fairly 
unsuccessful.

The main problems I've had so far are trying to keep the animation 
of one square playing (until the end of its animation cycle - around 
2 seconds) when the mouse cursor is removed from the area of said 
square.

In my particular piece, i'm using 48 separate photographs instead of 
just one design of a square. I'm also trying to include a sound 
which will be bound to each square, and like the animation, will 
continue playing even when the mouse cursor is removed from the 
square's area.

Like the example pasted, I want to user to be able to use their 
mouse to highlight a number of squares which will trigger their 
shrinking and growing animation, as well as their individual sound.

Basically, i'm trying to make a fancy version of the example, with 
photographs and sound ;-)

Anyway, hope someone can help, if you need any more information, 
I'll be happy to supply it. Thanks!

 - Josh Barton

What this seems to be doing is triggering copies of a time-based 
animation (it's duration never varies) whenever the mouse moves & is 
not held down.

Since this is a Flash animation, I'd bet it reuses one movie clip as 
many times as necessary.

The slowdown appears as more pixels need to be updated. As the 
animation objects get smaller, or less of them are visible, the 
performance seems to pick up again.

This is a Flash animation, but I'd bet it could be done in Director 
using Imaging Lingo.  I'd try to duplicate the existing behavior 
using a gradient bitmap within Director (using Imaging Lingo) & then 
worry about inserting actual images & adding sounds.  I'd alo expect 
that jamming whole images into the rects & playing sounds would cause 
additional slowdown.

So

1. make a behavior to track the mouse & extract trigger timings
2. make an animation that looks like the Flash film clip shown & try 
to play those when those triggers occur
3. try to substitute your images into the animations you've created
4. trigger sounds too

sorry I can't be more helpful w/o actually trying it

-Buzz
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Re: Help me save Director!!

[John Dowdell]

At 12:37 PM 1/6/3, Matt Wells wrote:
>I have a large CD-ROM project to do and I'm trying to convince my
>colleges to produce the CD-ROM in Director. They are flash people so
>they of course want to produce the CD in flash. Can anyone give me some
>good reasons (AMMO) to bring to my next meeting so that we can produce
>this project in director?

There were some points in a column I wrote last week:
http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/jd021.html

There's additional material available here:
http://www.macromedia.com/software/director/resources/integration/
(see sidebar "Flash and Director comparisons")

It's possible to do some projects for CD successfully in Flash. But Flash
Projectors are essentially just the web player, with a shell wrapped around
it. Director's memory management alone usually trumps all for such
non-websized projects.


> They are flash people so they of course want to
> produce the CD in flash.

Well, I guess it's a good thing they're not "horse people", then ;-)

(Seriously, that line of "but i know flash already" is a weak answer to
"what's the best tool for this job"... they're smart, they know
interactivity and design and testing, they have the ability to work with
Director just as you do.)

jd




John Dowdell, Macromedia Developer Support, San Francisco
(Best to reply on-list, to avoid my mighty spam filters!)
Technotes: http://www.macromedia.com/support/search/
Column: http://www.macromedia.com/desdev/jd_forum/
Technical daily diary: http://jdmx.blogspot.com/


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Re: Using baFileExists from buddyAPI

[Daniel Plaenitz]

At 00:09 08.01.2003 +0100, I wrote:

At 15:59 07.01.2003 -0500, Mendelsohn, Michael wrote:


In the buddyAPI method, baFileExists("c:\thisIsThePath.doc"), are there any
circumstances where the path has to be case sensitive?


Your example is win-based, I'd say: no for that environment.


may be cygwin offers an option to act anal about case. Then again, setting 
up cygwin and director apps to play together is geekish enough to expect 
that whoever tries it would care for himself.

in other news: I've seen much hatred and sorrow after using SPACE or 
8-bit-chars in path/filenames

dp

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Re: Using baFileExists from buddyAPI

[Daniel Plaenitz]

At 15:59 07.01.2003 -0500, Mendelsohn, Michael wrote:


In the buddyAPI method, baFileExists("c:\thisIsThePath.doc"), are there any
circumstances where the path has to be case sensitive?


Your example is win-based, I'd say: no for that environment.

However, http://www.mods.com.au/budapi/ (full function list) says the call 
is supported under MacOs, too. Under macOsX it is possible to configure the 
OS to be unixishly case sensitive. (search macosxhints.com for the details)

I didn't test it nor did I take a look at that  Version 1.4 OSX Beta 3  of 
budApi (url above, beta & future versions)  - but if anywhere I'd expect 
case sensitivity problems here: macOsX AND (power_user OR above)

best regards
daniel plaenitz

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Re: Writing sound members

[Andreas Gaunitz P11]

Wow, I'm not sure I can explain this more clearly... I'll try though: 
There is a program supplied with the Xtra, called Beatnik Editor Pro. 
In BEP you import midi files and samples. You create instruments from 
the samples, by giving them a key range, filter settings, loop 
settings etc. The midi notes, and the instruments they will use, are 
then compiled into a file called RMF file. The .RMF file is what the 
Xtra plays, and what I would call a MIDI file on steroids.

-A.


all true. now you've got my curiosity going though -- if you're not 
providing samples, where is the origination of the sound? through 
different clips the user supplies? just tones? .?

-evan

Andreas Gaunitz P11 wrote:

 I have the beatnik Xtra. IIRC it cannot alter sounds at all in the 
sense of writing a sound to a member or a "RAM slot".

 What it does is it lets you import sound setups made up of samples 
(cycled or one shot), and it can apply filtering and some fx (a 
rudimantary reverb etc) to the sounds.

 It's good for what it does - sort of a quicktime instrument/ midi 
file on steroids, but all setup work with the samples needs to be 
done beforehand and then "compiled" into a file (like a midi file 
w/ sounds included) and supplied to the xtra.

 -A.


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Using baFileExists from buddyAPI

[Mendelsohn, Michael]

Hi all...

In the buddyAPI method, baFileExists("c:\thisIsThePath.doc"), are there any
circumstances where the path has to be case sensitive?

Regards,
Michael Mendelsohn

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Re: Writing sound members

[Evan Adelman]

all true. now you've got my curiosity going though -- if you're not 
providing samples, where is the origination of the sound? through 
different clips the user supplies? just tones? .?

-evan

Andreas Gaunitz P11 wrote:

I have the beatnik Xtra. IIRC it cannot alter sounds at all in the 
sense of writing a sound to a member or a "RAM slot".

What it does is it lets you import sound setups made up of samples 
(cycled or one shot), and it can apply filtering and some fx (a 
rudimantary reverb etc) to the sounds.

It's good for what it does - sort of a quicktime instrument/ midi file 
on steroids, but all setup work with the samples needs to be done 
beforehand and then "compiled" into a file (like a midi file w/ sounds 
included) and supplied to the xtra.

-A.


of course there's always the defunct beatnik xtra that allows for 
user interaction with and manipulation of sound, but then that would 
be a whole nother pack of treats (like getting your hands on the 
right tools, getting your hands on a fully functional xtra, etc, 
etc). and i don't *think* beatnik allows for saving of what the user 
has done to external filesbut it may be worth a look?

-evan

Carl West wrote:

Andreas Gaunitz P11 wrote:


This is a matter of curiosity right now.

In the past, I've used Glen Picher's BinIO Xtra to read and write
external .aif files and have since been intrigued by the idea of
using lingo to create or modify a sound member directly in the cast.

Possible? Where would I start? Is there an Xtra?







First I want to say is "I don't know". But I can do some reasoning:
Changing something in the cast means that you will have to either a)
change the projector binary on the disk (not what you want) or b)
Find the audio file representation in RAM and write to that RAM spot.




That's what I was suspecting.



AFAIK there are no inbuilt methods and no Xtras for altering an audio
file/ RAM chunk, like eg imaging lingo does with an image.




And that's what I feared.




--

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  
_  _


m u t a n t
m e d i a  > solutions for success


Evan Adelman | 917.916.7378 | 598 Broadway  NY NY 10012
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | www.mutantmedia.com




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--

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _


m u t a n t
m e d i a  > solutions for success


Evan Adelman | 917.916.7378 | 598 Broadway  NY NY 10012
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | www.mutantmedia.com




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Re: Writing sound members

[Andreas Gaunitz P11]

I have the beatnik Xtra. IIRC it cannot alter sounds at all in the 
sense of writing a sound to a member or a "RAM slot".

What it does is it lets you import sound setups made up of samples 
(cycled or one shot), and it can apply filtering and some fx (a 
rudimantary reverb etc) to the sounds.

It's good for what it does - sort of a quicktime instrument/ midi 
file on steroids, but all setup work with the samples needs to be 
done beforehand and then "compiled" into a file (like a midi file w/ 
sounds included) and supplied to the xtra.

-A.


of course there's always the defunct beatnik xtra that allows for 
user interaction with and manipulation of sound, but then that would 
be a whole nother pack of treats (like getting your hands on the 
right tools, getting your hands on a fully functional xtra, etc, 
etc). and i don't *think* beatnik allows for saving of what the user 
has done to external filesbut it may be worth a look?

-evan

Carl West wrote:

Andreas Gaunitz P11 wrote:


This is a matter of curiosity right now.

In the past, I've used Glen Picher's BinIO Xtra to read and write
external .aif files and have since been intrigued by the idea of
using lingo to create or modify a sound member directly in the cast.

Possible? Where would I start? Is there an Xtra?







First I want to say is "I don't know". But I can do some reasoning:
Changing something in the cast means that you will have to either a)
change the projector binary on the disk (not what you want) or b)
Find the audio file representation in RAM and write to that RAM spot.




That's what I was suspecting.



AFAIK there are no inbuilt methods and no Xtras for altering an audio
file/ RAM chunk, like eg imaging lingo does with an image.




And that's what I feared.




--

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _


m u t a n t
m e d i a  > solutions for success


Evan Adelman | 917.916.7378 | 598 Broadway  NY NY 10012
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | www.mutantmedia.com




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windows icon question....

[grimmwerks]

Any way of grabbing a file's icon from the dll via an xtra?

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Re: Writing sound members

[Evan Adelman]

of course there's always the defunct beatnik xtra that allows for user 
interaction with and manipulation of sound, but then that would be a 
whole nother pack of treats (like getting your hands on the right tools, 
getting your hands on a fully functional xtra, etc, etc). and i don't 
*think* beatnik allows for saving of what the user has done to external 
filesbut it may be worth a look?

-evan

Carl West wrote:

Andreas Gaunitz P11 wrote:
 

This is a matter of curiosity right now.

In the past, I've used Glen Picher's BinIO Xtra to read and write
external .aif files and have since been intrigued by the idea of
using lingo to create or modify a sound member directly in the cast.

Possible? Where would I start? Is there an Xtra?
 



 

First I want to say is "I don't know". But I can do some reasoning:
Changing something in the cast means that you will have to either a)
change the projector binary on the disk (not what you want) or b)
Find the audio file representation in RAM and write to that RAM spot.
   


That's what I was suspecting.

 

AFAIK there are no inbuilt methods and no Xtras for altering an audio
file/ RAM chunk, like eg imaging lingo does with an image.
   


And that's what I feared.

 


--

_  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _


m u t a n t
m e d i a  > solutions for success


Evan Adelman | 917.916.7378 | 598 Broadway  NY NY 10012
[EMAIL PROTECTED]  | www.mutantmedia.com




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Trying to recreate this in Lingo

[ReplicantStudios]

Hi. I'm currently trying to use Lingo to recreate this interactive piece that I found 
on the internet a while ago - 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/arts/digital/yourwork/a_anthony.shtml

Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone could help me with creating this, any example code or 
files would be greatly appreciated (and I'll be forever in your debt!). So far, my 
attempts have been fairly unsuccessful.

The main problems I've had so far are trying to keep the animation of one square 
playing (until the end of its animation cycle - around 2 seconds) when the mouse 
cursor is removed from the area of said square. 

In my particular piece, i'm using 48 separate photographs instead of just one design 
of a square. I'm also trying to include a sound which will be bound to each square, 
and like the animation, will continue playing even when the mouse cursor is removed 
from the square's area.

Like the example pasted, I want to user to be able to use their mouse to highlight a 
number of squares which will trigger their shrinking and growing animation, as well as 
their individual sound. 

Basically, i'm trying to make a fancy version of the example, with photographs and 
sound ;-)

Anyway, hope someone can help, if you need any more information, I'll be happy to 
supply it. Thanks!

 - Josh Barton


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Re: Writing sound members

[Carl West]

Andreas Gaunitz P11 wrote:
> 
> >This is a matter of curiosity right now.
> >
> >In the past, I've used Glen Picher's BinIO Xtra to read and write
> >external .aif files and have since been intrigued by the idea of
> >using lingo to create or modify a sound member directly in the cast.
> >
> >Possible? Where would I start? Is there an Xtra?


> First I want to say is "I don't know". But I can do some reasoning:
> Changing something in the cast means that you will have to either a)
> change the projector binary on the disk (not what you want) or b)
> Find the audio file representation in RAM and write to that RAM spot.

That's what I was suspecting.

> AFAIK there are no inbuilt methods and no Xtras for altering an audio
> file/ RAM chunk, like eg imaging lingo does with an image.

And that's what I feared.

-- 
Carl West   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://eisen.home.attbi.com

I have no superfluous leisure; my stay must be stolen out
of other affairs; but I will attend you awhile.

   - Isabella, Measure for Measure, Act 3 Scene 1
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Re: Imaging vs. Sprites

[Robert Tweed]

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> Trapping interactions such as rollovers will be easier in sprites with the
> mouseEnter and mouseLeave handlers. I'll need to do a continuous checking
> for that with imaging lingo.

Just remember that easier isn't necessarily faster. If you aren't doing the
checking, then Director is having to do the checking. OK, Director's
internally compiled code is going to be a bit faster than Lingo, but as I
pointed out, you can take shortcuts that Director might not know about.

> I'm a little less keen on using sprites since
> a cell can contain any number of objects. It's much easier to paste them
> all into a single image than having a sprite for each object.

Again, this is a good reason to use IL. You may even be able to introduce
more optimisations around this, particularly if the content of some cells
doesn't change much.

> I was also considering a hybrid solution, using imaging and sprites. Each
> cell object has its own sprite and image object. I can attach behaviors to
> the sprite and let a global appearance manager retrieve the image of each
> cell object to paste onto a common bitmap member or the stage. The canvas
> bitmap can be placed in the topmost channel without any behaviors
attached.
> So I don't waste cycles checking for interactivity, while getting fast
> drawing routines.

I expect that approach will simply give you the worst of both worlds, plus a
lot of extra headaches. I'd do it one way or the other, and from your
description, IL sounds like the better choice. Unfortunately, Director just
isn't really all that fast, but you can push it to get a reasonable
performance out of it. Given the complexity of what you are doing, I expect
using sprites will be just as slow, but you will lose a lot of the potential
to add more optimisations as you go along.

- Robert

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Re: Imaging vs. Sprites

[Jakob Hede Madsen]

At 15:34 +0530 07/01/03, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:


the whole thing comes to a grinding halt after a few
minutes.


Does "grinding halt" mean something sudden like a crash, or is it 
rather that performance at one point gradually becomes slower and 
slower?

If the later then that could be an indication of a gradually 
accumulating memory management problem.
Maybe you're somehow generating a large number of image-objects, that 
are not disposed of. One possible explanation is an OOP hierarchy 
with a flaw in the destruction scheme. An example of one such 
possible flaw is timeoutObjects that doesn't release their 
targetObjects, because of a bug, if you don't initialize them into a 
variable.
Or maybe you're allocating memory in such a way that the memory-space 
quickly becomes fragmented.
When your memory space is consumed to the point where there is no 
more available RAM, virtual memory on the harddisk will typically be 
used, and that could seem like a "grinding halt".
Anyway, if you think that memory could be the issue, and you haven't 
explored that yet, you should look into things like the 
memory-inspector, and lingo such as the freeBytes and the freeBlock.
Actually I'm not quite sure if those lingo commands are adequate on 
systems where Director doesn't have any insight into the underlying 
virtual memory mechanism of the OS.
Maybe you need memory inspection tools external to Director to gauge 
the memory consumption.
On OS X you could use "Process Viewer" or "top" in the "Terminal".
I'm sure there are similar tools on Recent versions of Windows.

Maybe someone else could answer the more general topic here of memory 
gauging with Director.
Which tools and strategies do you use to monitor memory consumption?

Jakob.
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Re: Imaging vs. Sprites

[pranavn]

The issue probably isn't imaging Lingo so much, as lack of proper
optimisation.


Thanks Robert.
I know that my unoptimised code plays a major role in the performance drop.
But before I spend another week rewriting everything from scratch (the
current code can pass of as spaghetti in the eyes of the most discerning
gourmet  :-P), I thought I'd get a get a confirmation on whether
imaging really is much faster than sprites.



As for your second issue, of detecting click positions, this should
actually
be an area where you can improve on performance, compared with sprites.
Since many of the sprites will be arranged in a uniform grid, you can use a
simple caclulation to determine which one the mouse is over. This saves
doing a bounds check on every sprite, which for a large number of sprites
is
quite time consuming (assuming no other optimisations are used, although
Director probably does optimise this quite a bit anyway).


Trapping interactions such as rollovers will be easier in sprites with the
mouseEnter and mouseLeave handlers. I'll need to do a continuous checking
for that with imaging lingo. I'm a little less keen on using sprites since
a cell can contain any number of objects. It's much easier to paste them
all into a single image than having a sprite for each object.

I was also considering a hybrid solution, using imaging and sprites. Each
cell object has its own sprite and image object. I can attach behaviors to
the sprite and let a global appearance manager retrieve the image of each
cell object to paste onto a common bitmap member or the stage. The canvas
bitmap can be placed in the topmost channel without any behaviors attached.
So I don't waste cycles checking for interactivity, while getting fast
drawing routines.


Pranav Negandhi
Software Engineering
Learnet India Limited, Mumbai.
Phone: 91-22-859 8042 Ext: 316
http://www.learnetindia.com




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Re: Imaging vs. Sprites

[Robert Tweed]

- Original Message -
From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
> In our present version, I used imaging lingo to draw the cells,
> but found that the whole thing comes to a grinding halt after a few
> minutes.

The issue probably isn't imaging Lingo so much, as lack of proper
optimisation. It's hard to say what you might be doing that is causing such
poor performance (you're not writing to the stage.image for each sprite, are
you?) but imaging Lingo should be capable of at least equalling the
performance of individual sprites, and is often faster.

As for your second issue, of detecting click positions, this should actually
be an area where you can improve on performance, compared with sprites.
Since many of the sprites will be arranged in a uniform grid, you can use a
simple caclulation to determine which one the mouse is over. This saves
doing a bounds check on every sprite, which for a large number of sprites is
quite time consuming (assuming no other optimisations are used, although
Director probably does optimise this quite a bit anyway).

It's hard to say much more about this without knowing more about what your
code is doing.

BTW, you might be better off asking about this type of thing on DirGames-L.

- Robert

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Re: Writing sound members

[Andreas Gaunitz P11]

This is a matter of curiosity right now.

In the past, I've used Glen Picher's BinIO Xtra to read and write 
external .aif files and have since been intrigued by the idea of 
using lingo to create or modify a sound member directly in the cast.

Possible? Where would I start? Is there an Xtra?


--
Carl West   [EMAIL PROTECTED]   http://eisen.home.attbi.com


First I want to say is "I don't know". But I can do some reasoning: 
Changing something in the cast means that you will have to either a) 
change the projector binary on the disk (not what you want) or b) 
Find the audio file representation in RAM and write to that RAM spot. 
AFAIK there are no inbuilt methods and no Xtras for altering an audio 
file/ RAM chunk, like eg imaging lingo does with an image.


-A.


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Imaging vs. Sprites

[pranavn]

Hi list,

This issue has been bored to death here, but I just had to get a second
opinion.

We're doing a strategy game of the likes of Ceasar. Instead of an isometric
view, we have two orthogonal views to show which cell is player is in
currently. In our present version, I used imaging lingo to draw the cells,
but found that the whole thing comes to a grinding halt after a few
minutes.

The scene is divided into a 9 x 9 grid of cells. Cells which have certain
properties, such has being selected or containing some object are drawn
onto a bitmap member. The member is cast onto the stage using sprite
puppets.

The code is not optimised at all at this moment, but before I plunge into
cleaning things up, I'd like to know if imaging really is faster than
sprites. I have a lot of interactivity happening on the floor plan. And
since there is no tangible sprite for each cell, a lot of computation has
to go to find out which cell is clicked and its properties. Using sprites
for the cells would ease things up considerably as far as programming goes,
but I'm not sure if I want to use so many sprites. But if it's really going
to help, then I don't mind going for sprites.


Pranav Negandhi
Software Engineering
Learnet India Limited, Mumbai.
Phone: 91-22-859 8042 Ext: 316
http://www.learnetindia.com



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shockwave

[Brad Hile]

Does anyone know if the problem encountered with the recent security update
to shockwave affects standalone projectors?

I recently migrated a project from 8 to 8.5 and have had reports back from
the client on the updated version that the error "Ordinal 1333 could not be
located in IML32.dll" comes up under win2000 on startup though the projector
still runs with some of the functionaility not working.They seem to be
describing errors after eventual startup consistent with the MUI xtra
failing but where the link could be eludes me totally.

I only found a mention of this error under the shockwave technote and in the
archives in reference to shockwave.
http://www.macromedia.com/support/director/ts/documents/sw_xtraupdate_v106.h
tm

Unfortunately the client is on the other side of the country and I can't
replicate the error here which isn't the best scenario.

Thanks in advance

Brad
WIN XP pro, D8.5


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