Thanks to this forum I have learned quite a bit during the last few weeks. I originally had a very large movie of around 100 scenes. It was suggested that I should use sprites in a single scene to display the changing text while I kept the graphics constant. More efficient. I have a menu panel at the left and clicking on the text in the menu panel brings up the appropriate text in a sprite. Great.
Originally I had "previous" and "next" buttons in each scene and they sent you to the next or previous scenes. Easy. With the sprite approach they are superfluous. However I have too many lots of text to list in a menu so some menu items must have multiple scenes. In effect I want previous and next buttons associated with each (or some) bit(s) of text. Or a bit of text that acts like a hyperlink. Also I used to have a "screen x of y" at the base of each scene but now that I have sprites I can't do that.
If sprites are masked the all the contents of the sprites
will only be visible inside the area of the lowermost
object. If they are not masked then objects will extend
past that area making the sprite as big as the swf are
or larger.....
ergo your sprites can be very big....
Next hint for you.
Everything operates on a z order
Your menu for example can sit on the top or the rest of the objects
within your scene (so objects within it are clickable.
Next hint Sprites Can have child sprites.
If you have a sprite with several scenes and want
to preserve the background make it the child sprite.
Although,,,,,,you don't really need to make mulitple
scenes as you can always use place/remove for objects
in the timeline.
Next hints swap depths and _visible
If you have multiple sprites in a scene level
The sprites they all exist on separate z levels
you can move a sprites up or down via swap depths.
Although this example relates to building a custom cursor
you can easily change it to swaping depths of two sprites http://frets-files.com/html/modules/...hp?cat_id=1#q2
ala
Statements>Name=Expr;
on (release){
SpriteA.swapDepths.SpriteB;
}
_visible
Targeted Objects (sprites) can be visible via the transform action or not.
This is great for tabbed panel type of stuff.
on (release) {
t_t._visible = True;
F_S._visible = False;
nv._visible = False;
}
Attached is a crude exapmle of that
(beta build 2003.12.10)
Thanks for the prompt reply. Unfortunately I understood virtually none of it. But I'm prepared to research it. Can you point me towards some tutes that explain z orders, swap depths and _visible?
Think of the cartesian grid
x,y,x
x means a location left or right
y means a location up or down
z means front or back
Take a look at this image
You'll notice the word One sits on top
of the word two partially blocking it
same with Two sitting on top of One
If you look at the outline panel
the depth or z order shows that the text one is on
top.
The same holds true for sprites in scenes and objects or
Sprites and objects in other sprites.
While swap depth isn't availabe with 2.0
swapdepth (z order) is in max
visible can work either in the timeline
as place and remove.
You can also access it via transform
and is available in max and 2.0
In 2.0 your visibility would need to be a sprite
In other words
On Event
Tell Target "MySprite"
-Transform
Select visibility
0 or 1
0 means the object is invisible
1 means the object is visible
In Max
It's var=expression
Select your target from the dd menu
and your transform from the name
then in the dialog box type
True or False