MACROMEDIA DIRECTOR MX 2004-USING DIRECTOR, Use Manual, Page: 442 / 500

442 Chapter 22: Managing and Testing Director Projects
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Organize the cast members in your cast in a logical way. You might choose to group all the cast
members of a particular type together, or you might choose to group the cast members from
each scene together. Choose a system that works for you and that will make it easy to find cast
members when your cast becomes large. You can also choose to keep groups of cast members in
separate casts.
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When referring to cast members, sprites, and frames in scripts, use the name of the cast
member or sprite or the name of a frame marker. This avoids the need to change your code if
you need to rearrange cast members, sprites, or frames during the project.
For example, the following script refers to a cast member by its cast member number:
member(16).text = "Good planning makes Director projects easy."
If the text cast member 16 has to be moved in the cast, the script becomes invalid.
Instead, use the following script:
member("Output_text").text = "Good planning makes Director projects easy."
Naming sprites makes changes to your script even easier. For example, the following script
refers to a sprite by its number:
sprite (1).text
Instead, use the following script:
sprite("input").member.text
When you add a marker to a frame and use the marker name to refer to the frame, you can
move the marker without breaking the script.
The following script refers to a frame by its number:
_movie.go(27)
It is better to add a marker to the frame and use the marker name, as in the following script:
_movie.go("Main_menu")
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During work sessions, save your movie file often. Save a copy of the movie after each
milestone, such as a day of work or after adding a significant new feature or section. This way,
if problems arise, you can easily compare the current version of the file to a slightly older
version to locate the source of the problem. Keep several copies of your file at different stages of
development in case you need to go back several steps.