Writing Scripts To Control The Movie; Looping The Playhead With Lingo - MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-GETTING STARTED WITH DIRECTOR Getting Started

From the Cast window, drag the Animation cast member to the Stage, placing it in the lower
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right corner of the Stage.
The new Animation button sprite appears on the Stage and in frames 55 through 64 in
channel 6 of the Score. Because you already selected frame 55 in channel 6, the sprite
appears in that location when you drag it to the Stage. If you do not preselect a channel in
the Score, the sprite appears in the first available channel in the frame where the playhead
is located.
On the Stage, click the Go to Animation button.
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Use the Sprite tab in the Property inspector, as you did earlier, to give the button an x coordinate
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of 350 and a y coordinate of 300.
Each scene of your movie is graphically complete. You are now ready to add Lingo to the buttons,
to let users navigate through the movie.
Note: As you complete the tutorial, remember to save your work frequently.

Writing scripts to control the movie

By scripting, you can implement almost any kind of user interaction and multimedia effect that
you can imagine. You can make simple buttons function, as you will soon do in this tutorial. You
can also script more complex tasks, including controlling every aspect of a movie's content
without using the Score.
Director supports scripting in two languages: Lingo and JavaScript syntax. In this tutorial, you
will script in Lingo only, but if you are already familiar with JavaScript, you may want to try
JavaScript syntax instead. Lingo is designed to be easy to learn, so don't be intimidated. After you
know the basic concepts, you can use the extensive scripting vocabulary to control anything in
your movie.

Looping the playhead with Lingo

The scenes of your movie are not much good as scenes if the playhead simply races through them
without stopping to let the user absorb their content. In this movie, the playhead must stay in one
scene until the user makes a decision to go to a different scene. In this tutorial, you will add Lingo
to a special Script channel in the Score and to your button sprites.
66 Chapter 4: Building Your First Basic Movie