Howdy.
I would like my startup screen to be either an in game animation, or a quicktime movie.
I've tried the quicktime way and this resulted in ugly crashing. Can anyone think of a way to do this??

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Use a map...

TNX for the suggestion.

I created a 15 frame 640x480 animation asset, a one square 640x480 map and stamped the animation asset onto the map. When I test it, it crashes.

Any pointers?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers,
CG

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Quote

Originally posted by cgoran:
**TNX for the suggestion.

I created a 15 frame 640x480 animation asset, a one square 640x480 map and stamped the animation asset onto the map. When I test it, it crashes.**

Mr. Cgoran,

Did your map have any layers on it, or did you just create a map, save it, and then use a stamp control to add a stamp to it?

You need to have a <Player> layer as well as another layer(where you can place your stamp or whatever) for the map to load. Otherwise, crashola.

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I created a map selected a layer and used the pecil tool to add the stamp.
I was giong to try using stamp control next.

Arrrgg.

Cheers,
CG

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Quote

Originally posted by cgoran:
I created a map selected a layer and used the pecil tool to add the stamp.
I was giong to try using stamp control next.

Mr. Cgoran,

I don't recall if you need to have ground or not. I seem to remember having to create an all-white tile and placing it on a map that I wanted to be all white in order for it to work. But then, I may have had something else wrong and just did that to eliminate a possibility for error... heh.

You also might want to check the stamp itself. Can you get it to load on a map that does work alright? If not, then the stamp is the problem. Check its type, resolution, colors, etc.

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Thanks I will try that.

Cheers.

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Sorry to jump in late on this, but I believe that you can only use a map location once you have an active player - if you use a map before a player is created and the "Main" event is called, Coldstone will crash. Thus a map is probably not suitable for a startup screen - can anyone back me up on this?

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I don't know what I'm talking about.
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Quote

Originally posted by Glenn:
Sorry to jump in late on this, but I believe that you can only use a map location once you have an active player - if you use a map before a player is created and the "Main" event is called, Coldstone will crash. Thus a map is probably not suitable for a startup screen - can anyone back me up on this?

While I don't know for sure, that does make a heck of a lot of sense Glenn, and is probably the overall problem.

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I'm pretty sure that you can have an animation (or a series of pictures like what you see with Ambrosia's games) before your startup screen. But you'd need to end with a stable picture so that the Player can choose what he/she wants to do: Start New Game, Load Game, Edit Game. And you can't define those events choices without a picture.

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-- Debra
Danillitphil Productions

After transporting to a main location, you can have a dialogue come up (without text) and make it play a quicktime movie (probably 640x480 and have the ratio set to 1). Be sure to set the music volume to 0 if you have the background music in the movie (no need if you just use the play music event for background music). It worked for me for playing a credits movie when pressing the "Credits" button on the opening menu, so it should work here.

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Cool. Interesting idea.
Is it possible to have the menu options as well? Start game, load game and quit?

TNX!

CG

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Sure. If you're talking about having those options on your startup screen, make sure you have the buttons (words, words with a button graphic behind it, etc.) on your picture, and make a main location out of it. Then make an event link location for each of your options, and press the "edit event" button to make the event to make it work. Finally, in the main location for your startup screen, you can select the event link location you just made in the "Link" section of the window (select it in the little pull-down menu thing), press the "+" button, select the area you want to be clickable by that link, and press apply.

If you're talking about a pulldown menu, you will need to make events for what you want to happen, then, in the game options, select the menu tab. Select which menu you want to include your events in. Press the "+" button, select the event you want to use, then, in the text field, type the name you want to have under the menu/the key you want to have to initiate it when the command key is pressed (for example, for a new game, you may have "New Game/N" (without the quotes) to have it say "New Game" in the menu and you can press command-N to initiate the event if you don't want to go through the menu).

Hope that helped :).

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Quote

Originally posted by Glenn:
**Sorry to jump in late on this, but I believe that you can only use a map location once you have an active player - if you use a map before a player is created and the "Main" event is called, Coldstone will crash. Thus a map is probably not suitable for a startup screen - can anyone back me up on this?

**

If your game excludes the player creation dialogs/ i.e. you have a set main character, you can use a map
predetermined name/appearance etc and set up his stats from the 'main event'
The main event is required, nothing more, start game/new game only recieve precedence in their execution, if you wanted you cold play elevator music during newGame then teleport the player to a map where he is confined by access blocks, switch his appearance to a white pict file, and load stamps that when clicked perform engine calls...all before the lights come up.
This gives you an active yet invisible player and more functionality than a mainLocation or a Movie, with less size.

The player creation dialogs are convenient but not required and, if you are partial to randomly rolling values you can always use the change Global action select random and let'er rip...this may be an inconvenient method of getting it done but you can do a lot more with it graphically(i.e. animation) or it could be as simple as point and click.

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