Educational Software Any thoughts?

[WorldMC]

Hi There!
Thanks for giving this a quick read...I'm developing some educational software and the project is turning out to be quite big, what with videos, audio and everything else involved.

I have a prototype and the feedback seems to be that if it runs of the DVD ROM its jerky and seems to skip bits and pieces.

What I'm thinking is that I'll need to run some of the material from the Hard Disk and some from the DVD.

I've never done this before and it's up to me to get this done!

Any pointers would be absolutely appreciated!!


Thanks in advance for your advice and time!!!!!!

 

[robotduck]

Buddy API is a good tool to use whenever file copying is involved. You can use Buddy API to identify a safe place on the user's HD to copy a file to, to check for free space, and to perform the copy function itself.

Check out the following commands:

baSysFolder (to identify the user's temp folder)
or
baTempFileName (to identify the name of a temp file to use)

baDiskInfo (to check there's enough free space)

baCopyFile (to copy the file itself from the DVD to the HD)

http://www.mods.com.au/budapi

- Ben

 

[WorldMC]

Hi Ben... I've heard of Buddy API.. I'll check it out.

Do you have any experience working with paths...that is once they run the program from their HD's to access the next file on the DVD (one with lots of video).

My main issue is that I think I'll have to program it (as the DVD Drive letter can be different on each machine?

If I can get this working I'll be delighted!!!

Hopefully the software will help a lot of students!

What are your thoughts?

Thanks!

 

[robotduck]

Director's built in property "the moviepath" will give you the path of the currently running movie, including the drive letter at the beginning, so when running off the DVD initially, you could save some data (eg a pref, or registry entry) indicating the dvd drive letter.

- Ben

 

[WorldMC]

Ok..thanks Ben..
I'll have to look into that!! For sure
Is it that I access the registry entry through director or would it be more along the lines of creating a global variable and taking the first character of theMoviePath and then calling that global when I'm trying to access the next movie?

A question that gets me is that I'm usually just using the jump to movie (built in behaviour) to go between movies in my project.

Is there a way to use the DVD drive letter variable from here or will I have to go into the code?

Cheers Ben... much appreciated