Creating sequences of movies
At the end of a movie (that is to say when all events on
all time lines have been processed) the movie can do one of three
things:
- Terminate. On a mobile phone this will mean the user will be returned to
the display prior to the movie starting.
- Loop. The movie will restart from the beginning.
- Jump to another movie.
All these actions can be set by clicking on the 'Options' tab in the editor. These
same actions can also be initiated though a hotspot or through a softbutton. All the
movies which are chained together must all be in the same directory (see below for why).
When the action is jump to another movie then the movie can be in the same
JAR file or on the server. A midlet requires that the 'Server codebase'
also be set since a midlet has no way to know how it was downloaded.
The ability to chain sequences of movies together in this way can
also improve the execution speed of a movie by reducing the number of
layers in any one movie. A large number of layers can reduce the
execution speed if many of the layers are not visible over parts of the movie.
The first movie in a sequence
As mentioned all movies in a sequence must be in the same directory.
The first movie which runs in a sequence is the movie that is being edited when the
runnable files are created and uses the name of that movie for the naming
of the runnable applet/midlet/iappli. The product follows the links starting at this first, current
movie to work out what files to include in the JAR files created.
Any movie can therefore be the first movie in a sequence. There is
nothing different about the first movie.
Location of chained movies
When jumps to movies are specified in the editor the full file path of the movie
jumped to is not stored, only it's name. This means that all related .csm files
in a sequence must be in the same directory. This restriction means that it is
possible to move a set of related .csm files from one PC to another, or to a
different directory on the same PC while still keeping the jumps between movies meaningful.