Director 8:  Advanced

Course description

Overview: Students will learn advanced techniques for creating interactive movies using Director.

Prerequisites: Basic knowledge of the Windows operating system, and completion of the Director 8 Introduction course, or equivalent knowledge.

Performance-based objectives

Lesson objectives help students become comfortable with the course, and also provide a means to evaluate learning. Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

•           Import PowerPoint presentations and optimize them for use in Director.

•           Create behaviors and scripts with Lingo programming.

•           Define variables, including lists, to hold information as the movie is run.

•           Create custom Lingo handlers that can be called from other scripts.

•           Control the motion of sprites via Lingo scripting.

•           Create conditional scripts and repeat loops to perform complex tasks.

•           Use Director’s debugging tools to diagnose script problems.

•           Create movies that play other movies, including a time-saving "stub" projector that can run protected Director movies as well as standard .DIR files.

Director 8 Advanced for Windows

Course content

Lesson 1: Planning & Importing Media

Planning the Movie

Importing from PowerPoint

Optimizing Images

Lesson 2: Adding Navigation

Replacing Tempo Channel Playback Control

Working with Images

Using Behaviors for Navigation

Lesson 3: Lingo Scripting Concepts

Lingo as a Language

Mechanics

Keyword types

Vocabulary

Putting It Together

Lesson 4: Real-World Lingo Scripting

Planning Scripts Based on Objectives

Navigation Scripts

Lesson 5: Data Management Using Lists

Creating Radio Buttons and Check Boxes

Lists, Symbols, and the onStartup Handler

The Watcher, Message, and Debug Windows

Creating Loops and Calling Custom Handlers

Lesson 6: Preparing for Distribution

Embedding Fonts

Branching to other Movies