macromedia.director.basics
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Re: efficient use of sprites

Subject: Re: efficient use of sprites
From: "Norman06" <webforumsuser@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2008 19:00:05 +0000 (UTC)
Newsgroups: macromedia.director.basics

Hi Dave, thanks for responding.
 [q][i]Originally posted by: [b][b]Newsgroup User[/b][/b][/i]
 So if I understand correctly, you have more products than can be 
 displayed on the stage at any given time. So you have a scroll bar the 
 shifts the location of the sprites, i.e. some sprites slide off of the 
 stage and make room for others that slide on. At any given time there 
 are a certain number of products always on the visible part of the 
 stage. Is this a correct description?[/q]
 That is entirely correct!

 [q]There are many ways to do things in Director. As a matter of fact you 
 could build your application and not have a single thing on the score, 
 it could be completely blank! Using imaging Lingo you could create your 
 entire stage image at any given moment based on the position of the 
 scrollbar.

 I am not suggesting you build it this way. It's sort of the opposite of 
 the way you have built your application. I only mention this to 
 illustrate that the limitation is not Director's rather it is the design.

 An easier method (meaning it requires less complicated coding) is to use 
 a set number of sprites on the stage as 'placeholders'. For example, 
 let's say you decide to allow for 4 rows of products, each with 5 
 columns (arrow, name, line, pdf1, pdf2). A total of 20 sprites, which 
 would not change regardless of how many products you include.

 Based on the position of the scrollbar, you would substitute the sprites 
 member property (i.e. which cast member is assigned to the sprite). 
 Nothing would be moving. You could make the products move up/down one 
 row at a time (and then off the screen) or scroll by 'pages'.[/q]
 That sounds very good. I was already thinking of only creating sprites for the 
visible products. Your idea shows exactly how to implement such a thing.
 I'm actually not the one who created the app in the first place. Of course I 
would've done it a lot better. ;-)

 [q]It's not obvious to me the purpose of the underlines and arrows. Can you 
elaborate on this?[/q]
 The arrow and line don't have a function at all, just looks. I guess the 
graphics guy was inspired. ;-)

 As a matter of practice, I'm gonna do a test with this new approach. Thanks!




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