We have reached the stage where we have a functioning
main menu. Clicking on active links bring us to
reserved frames within the score, however these
frames do not contain any information.
An important consideration for your movie will
be consistency as your user moves from screen to
screen. There will be a number of common page elements
throughout your movie, good examples are BACK and
NEXT buttons or page titles. These common elements
need to be in exactly the same position on screen
as your user navigates from page to page.
To achieve this we are going to plan and create
a master page layout. Once we are happy with the
layout of the master page we will copy and paste
it to produce a page for each section of our movie.
Build a master screen
1. The first step is to create a master screen
that contains all the required elements for the
pages in your movie, these would be page title,
company logo and other company details, a text field
to display text information, navigation buttons
for BACK, NEXT and MAIN MENU.
2. Figure 5.1 below is how the NMTC master page
could look like, create the Company Details page
use that as a master layout.
Figure 5.1: Master Destination Page
3. Happy with the master page you need to open
the score (Ctrl. 4) and select the sprites that
make up the master page (see figure 5.2).
4. Once selected, copy those sprites to your clipboard
(Ctrl. C) and paste them into each of the remaining
sections of your card (Department Details and Personal
Details sections)
Figure 5.2: Select the master layout
sprites, copy and paste
Now you will have three identical destination pages.
We are now going to use the "Exchange Cast
Member" tool to make light work of producing
three different yet very consistent destination
pages.
Some sprite we will not want to change, these would
be the navigation buttons and company logo/address.
The others, however, need to be changed to suit
the section of your movie. The most obvious are
the page titles and text fields.
By producing three identical pages we have three
identical layers of sprites, and we know that a
sprite is an instance or child of a cast member.
If we changed the parent of a sprite we would only
change what the sprite displayed on stage, we wouldn't
alter the position, ink effect or other sprite attributes.
5. To exchange the parent of a sprite you must
first select the sprite (this may be done either
in the score or on stage but I recommend you work
in the score, it gives you much more control).
6. With the sprite selected, open or bring the
cast to the front (Ctrl. 3) and select the cast
member that you'd like to replace as parent to the
selected sprite, see figure 5.3.
In this example we are going to change the parent
cast member of the Page Title sprite from "Company
Details Page" to Department Details Page".
Figure 5.3: Select the sprite AND
the new cast member
7. With both the sprite and cast member selected
click on the Exchange Cast Member tool, see figure
5.4.
Figure 5.4: The Exchange Cast Member
tool
This action will, for this example, change the
parent of the sprite selected above from Company
Details Page to Department Details Page.
8. Work through your Department Details Page and
Personal Details Page, exchanging relevant sprites
as required. Another example would be the text box.
In the last tutorial you created your first lingo
script, a behavior that told the playback head to
go to the marker "Main Menu" when the
playback head tried to exit the frame (on exitFrame).
This script existed in the last frame of each section,
so there are three instances of this script in your
score.
This script is no-longer needed as we do not want
the playback head to return to the main menu soon
after arriving at one of the destination pages.
What we do want is the playback head to remain at
the destination page until the user wishes to move
on.
Since the behavior sprites are already in place
it makes sense to change code of the parent, this
will affect all sprites from this parent or cast
member that exist in the score.
9. The code to prevent the playback head from moving
onto a new frame is go the frame, see figure 5.5.
Figure 5.5: Wait on the current
frame script
10. Before we complete this section,
create a cast member script for the "Main Menu"
cast member (part of the navigation bar at the bottom
of the screen) that will return the playback head
to the Main Menu marker when the mouse button is
clicked UP:
on mouseUp
go to frame "Main
Menu"
end
Figure 5.6: The Project so far
In the tutorial you have learned how to:
create destination screens with a consistent
look and feel
exchange cast members
edit or re-code a frame script to pause the
movie on a specified frame