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: 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.