Including Your Game Prototype in
How to Lingo

Revised 11-4

Some complexities are involved in getting your game prototype successfully transferred to your How to Lingo project. Here's how to overcome them.

First, transfer all the sprites from your finished game prototype movie to your How to Lingo movie. Paste the sprites starting from the Behavior Channel, so that you have two occupied frames in that channel and the remainder of your sprites in channels 1 through 10. (You may use other channel assignments, but you'll need to adjust these directions accordingly.)

Second, re-open your game prototype file. Open the Cast. Find the fifteen graphics that supply the background images. They are named sceneSource1.01, sceneSource1.02, etc., up to sceneSource1.15. Select all fifteen cast members, right-click, and choose Copy Cast Members. Close the game prototype and re-open your How to Lingo movie. Open the Cast. Go to the last slot in your Cast and paste in the copied cast members.

Select each of "sceneSource" cast members in succession and change its name. Make the first member sceneSource1. Make the second member sceneSource2. Make the third member sceneSource3... and so on until the last, which becomes sceneSource15.

Now open the SCORE of your movie. Scroll over to the point where you pasted in your game prototype sprites. In the Behavior Channel you should find two scripts. The first is in the frame that corresponds to the marker that begins your Game Prototype scene. The second is in the next frame. Open the first of these scripts by double-clicking on it. Within the exitFrame handler, add these lines:

sprite(1).member = member("sceneSource" & random(15))
sprite(2).member = member("sceneSource" & random(15))

Put away the first Behavior Script and double-click the second script. This is the long script that controls the animation for both the character and the background. In this script, wherever you see:

sprite(1).member = member pick

or

sprite(2).member = member pick

change the line to:

sprite(1).member = member("sceneSource" & random(15))

or

sprite(2).member = member("sceneSource" & random(15))

Note that you will need to make FOUR changes. If you make fewer than this, you'll have errors.

Finally, please notice that this solution assumes you are using the simpler version of the game prototype, containing only a single falling object, no "magic orb," no interaction code, and no scoring. If you've built any or all these features into your game, you need to include them successfully--and you'll have to solve the problems they pose independently.

If you're struggling to integrate your fully configured game prototype, you may want to cut your losses and substitute the simplified version. You can download a zipped version of the minimum game code. The file is 10.5 megabytes, so use a fast connection and be patient.