Temporary picts

[erik hansen]

i have no idea how, but i want to use MC to drive
MIDI files and "patches" in sequencing software.
the time delay factor is always the biggest
challenge. 

right now moving dancers around while changing
icons is enough, but it would be great to add
programable body movement movement within the
icon. that would require lots of graphics or...
who knows what.

--- Shari <gogypsy at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> 
> To be fair, as far as I know, the things I want
> to do are doable, but 
> require major code changes, a basic rewrite of
> the whole program.  I 
> used addcolor heavily, not just for opencard
> handlers in HC, as I 
> write games, which means graphics and sounds
> and cutsie stuff.  While 
> addcolor was a tack on for HC and had many many
> limitations, it also 
> had strengths which I learned to exploit.  And
> I got used to being 
> able to do things a certain way, the whole
> concept of temporary 
> graphics.  I made that concept work for me.
> 
> I'm actually very very happy I invested in
> Metacard, as it opens up 
> new worlds for me, OSX and Windows, native
> color icons, native color 
> period.  But it does lack a few features that
> Hypercard had.  It's 
> possible to do them, but with a LOT more code,
> as far as I know.   I 
> don't have to learn a whole new language, but
> it is different enough 
> that my code doesn't translate simply.
> 
> And it beats having to do it in C!
> 
> One weakness seems to be playing simultaneous
> sounds or sounds in 
> succession while other scripts are running. 
> That was so easy in HC.
> 
> put "sound1,sound2,sound3" into theSounds
> 
> repeat 25
>     play any item of the sounds
> end repeat
> doOtherHandlerStuff
> 
> And nice and sweet, Hypercard would play 25
> sounds in smooth 
> succession, while the script went on to do
> other things, usually 
> visual addcolor type things.  You could also do
> a repeat with x = 1 
> to the number of sounds and have them played in
> order.
> 
> First problem in MC, was that I could not get a
> player to play a 
> sound that was embedded, I had to take the
> sounds out of the stack 
> back onto the hard drive.
> 
> The goal was to play a succession of sounds,
> while a simple 
> information dialog box opened.  This was
> actually called by a menu 
> choice, so it needed to run on every card.  I
> tried putting a player 
> on just one card and calling to it, but it
> didn't play unless that 
> card was open.
> 
> Maybe there's a better way to do this, I surely
> would love to know 
> it!  What I ended up doing was this (compare
> this to 5 lines of code 
> in HC):
> 
> on giveInfo
> put the effective filename of this stack into
> wit
>      set the itemdelimiter to "/"
>      put "darn you.wav" into the last item of
> wit
>      set the fileName of player "Music" to wit
>      set the callbacks of player "Music" to
> "531,end1"
>      set the startTime of player "Music" to "0"
>      set the currentTime of player "Music" to
> "0"
>      start player "Music"
>      answer "myInfo"
> end giveInfo
> 
> on end1
>    put the effective filename of this stack
> into wit
>    set the itemdelimiter to "/"
>    put "aaah.wav" into the last item of wit
>    set the fileName of player "Music" to wit
>    set the startTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the currentTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the callbacks of player "Music" to
> "1020,end2"
>    start player "Music" of cd 1
> end end1
> 
> on end2
>    put the effective filename of this stack
> into wit
>    set the itemdelimiter to "/"
>    put "goodie.wav" into the last item of wit
>    set the fileName of player "Music" to wit
>    set the startTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the currentTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the callbacks of player "Music" to
> "472,end3"
>    start player "Music" of cd 1
> end end2
> 
> on end3
>    put the effective filename of this stack
> into wit
>    set the itemdelimiter to "/"
>    put "oh yeah.wav" into the last item of wit
>    set the fileName of player "Music" to wit
>    set the startTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the currentTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the callbacks of player "Music" to
> "628,end4"
>    start player "Music" of cd 1
> end end3
> 
> on end4
>    put the effective filename of this stack
> into wit
>    set the itemdelimiter to "/"
>    put "talk to you.wav" into the last item of
> wit
>    set the fileName of player "Music" to wit
>    set the startTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the currentTime of player "Music" to "0"
>    set the callbacks of player "Music" to empty
>    start player "Music" of cd 1
> end end4
> 

=====
erik at erikhansen.org                 http://www.erikhansen.org

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