saving in a standalone?

[Shari]

>I presume there is no workaround to this other than
>distributing a copy of the MC engine with the stack as
>a runtime module.

What I ended up doing, is creating a separate stack for the program 
to save to.  That way, I can have my standalone, which never changes, 
and all saves are saved into a separate stack.

It was explained to me that in order for Metacard to be truly 
cross-platform, it had to act in a way compatible with various 
platforms.  On Mac, you could save to the program.  But Windows can't.

It takes a bit of getting used to if you've migrated from Hypercard 
(which I did).  But you know, all the neat features of Metacard, more 
than make up for the few things you lose.  I've put my latest game 
out for OSX and PPC, and the Windows version is in beta testing.

Regarding saving data:

When I launch the standalone, it goes and gets the saved info from 
the stack, and plugs it in where necessary.  It also puts the stack 
path into a global variable, so that I don't have to go find the 
stack every time I save.  I take the effective filename of the 
standalone, change the itemDel to "/", and put the file name of the 
stack into the appropriate item, and put it into a global such as 
stackToSaveTo.

Every time the standalone wants to save something (which is 
FREQUENTLY), it saves to the stack.

put "theSavedInfo" into cd fld "savedScores" of cd 1 of stack stackToSaveTo
save stack stackToSaveTo

The save stack stores user preferences, high score info, and other data.

Metacard has some really awesome features, and once you get into it, 
you will see that you really haven't lost anything with the 
migration.  You have gained a lot.

Shari C

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