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Organize the cast members in your cast in a logical way. You might choose to group all the cast
members of a particular type together, or you might choose to group the cast members from
each scene together. Choose a system that works for you and that will make it easy to find cast
members when your cast becomes large. You can also choose to keep groups of cast members in
separate casts.
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When referring to cast members and frames in Lingo scripts, use the name of the cast member
or the name of a frame marker. This avoids the need to change your code if you need to
rearrange cast members or frames during the project.
For example, the following Lingo refers to a cast member by its cast member number:
member(16).text = "Good planning makes Director projects easy."
If the text cast member 16 has to be moved in the cast, the script becomes invalid.
Instead, use the following Lingo:
member("Output_text").text = "Good planning makes Director projects easy."
When you add a marker to a frame and use the marker name to refer to the frame, you can
move the marker without breaking the script.
The following Lingo refers to a frame by its number:
go to frame 27
It is better to add a marker to the frame and use the marker name, as in the following Lingo:
go to frame "Main_menu"
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During work sessions, save your movie file often. Save a copy of the movie after each
milestone, such as a day of work or after adding a significant new feature or section. This way,
if problems arise, you can easily compare the current version of the file to a slightly older
version to locate the source of the problem. Keep several copies of your file at different stages of
development in case you need to go back several steps.
About testing movies to avoid problems
While you develop movies, you might encounter some difficulties because creating interesting
movies and trying out new ideas always involves some experimentation. By testing your movies
according to the simple guidelines described in this section, you can prevent problems from
becoming obstacles.
Testing early in development
When you begin a Director project, it is a good practice to test the functionality of your movie
early in the development process to help ensure that you discover any problems while they are still
minor. Waiting to test lets small problems become larger ones as you add features to your movie
that depend on problematic functionality that was implemented earlier. By incorporating testing
into your authoring process early, you'll find these problems and have the opportunity to fix them
before adding features to your movie.
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Chapter 25
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