|01 Audio Visual Purpose The Audio Visual icon is a main menu icon which is used to display the submenu of audio and visual icons. It also appears in the submenu and can be placed in the outline. If placed in the outline, it is used to set up the screen resolution, to load a picture onto the screen, and/or as a parent to other audio visual children icons. Relation The Audio Visual icon can contain itself and other audio visual icons as children. It cannot contain other types of icons as children. Usage You use the Audio Visual icon to define screen characteristics including: resolution, depth, and palette. It serves several purposes and can be used in different ways. When you use the Audio Visual icon to load and display a picture, the picture will cover up any other pictures or graphics already on the screen. You may change the palette of the picture you are loading, as well as the screen resolution. You may also specify where on the screen the picture will be displayed. The Audio Visual icon can also be used to clear the screen. To do this, place the icon in the outline, but do not specify a picture file. You may specify the screen appearance of the blank screen. When you change the screen settings with the Audio Visual icon, you control whether or not the new settings can be altered by the icon's children. If not altered by a child, the settings will remain in effect until the next Audio Visual icon changes them. The Audio Visual icon and any of the icons in its submenu may be placed in a Content Window. In the Content Window, Audio Visual icons are placed as children of the File Folder icon. The Content Window serves as a library of audio and visual elements which may be copied to a Flow Window for use in a presentation. Audio Visual requester To specify the name of the picture file to retrieve, click on the File field and type in the name. You may also click on Directory to open the File requester. Under Screen Definition, there are several modes available. Click on the first gadget on the left to select between Low Resolution, High Resolution, Extra Halfbrite, Hold and Modify, or current. Each of the preceding modes may be in Interlace and/or Overscan. To select either of these options, click on the gadget, and a check mark will appear. Select Load to load the palette from the referenced picture. Choose Edit if you wish to make changes to it. The Palette requester is presented. Use the slider gadgets to select palette colors. Depth refers to the number of colors used. Raise 2 to the power indicated by the number in the depth gadget to realize the actual number of colors available. Click on the Cursor gadget if you wish to have the cursor present while displaying the picture. To change the palette definition, click on the Palette pecified picture file. The Palette requester is presented. First click the mouse pointer on a color of your choice and the slider gadgets will show the current settings settings for that color. Use the slider gadgets to adjust that palette color. |12Left|12 and |12Top|12 gadgets are used to specify the coordinates of the top left corner of the picture. Click on either gadgets to enter the Specify Value requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual). Here you can specify the top and left coordinates of the screen in terms of pixels in current resolution. Note that 0,0 refers to the top left corner of the screen. You are allowed to specify negative values of top or left coordinates if you want to display only part of a picture. Click on the |12Transitions|12 gadget to specify the screen pattern to be used when switching pictures. The Transitions requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual) is presented. There are a number of screen transition effects, dissolves, slats, and fades, available as options. It is important to note that you cannot use any of the screen transition effects except Fades when you are going from one screen resolution to another. You can also use the Fades to create transitions from one screen color to another. Also if you are using transition effects when going from one palette to another the old palette is used until the transition is completed and then the screen colors are set to the new palette. For these reasons it is recommended that you use a single resolution and palette throughout an application, if you want to use transition effects. Experiment with them until you find a satisfactory transition for your application. It is a good practice to choose one or two effects and use it throughout the application to avoid disorienting the viewer. |02 Digitized Sound To specify the sound file to be used, click on the |12Filename|12 field and type in the name. Or you may click on the |12Directory|12 gadget to open the file requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual). You can also use variables to specify filenames as described in Chapter 3 in the user manual. Using the on/off gadget select |12Pause|12 on or off. Pause on means pause the application until the sound file has been played back completely. This is the default option. The application moves to the icon following the sound icon after the completion of the sound event. The Pause off state starts the sound and continues to execute the next icon in the outline. Turn the Pause off if you want to start the the sound and immediately also start executing the action of the following icon such as an animation or a video sequence. This way you can synchronize sound and video. The |12Speaker|12 gadget allows specification of |12Left|12, |12Right|12 or |12Stereo|12 sound. Stereo samples will be played back in stereo while mono samples, if played back as stereo the stereo effect will be simulated. You can simultaneously play a number of sound files. There are four channels in Amiga hardware and each mono sound file takes up one channel to play back. Each stereo file uses two channels. Thus you can have one sound playing through the left speaker, another through the right, and have a third stereo sound play back on both. Thus you can superimpose multiple sounds to create special effects. Click on the multistate Sound gadget to specify |12Start|12, |12Stop,|12 or |12Stop All|12. Start and Stop gadget requires a specific sound filename to either start or stop playing the sound. The Stop All option, which does not require a filename, stops all the sounds that are being played back simultaneously. You can click on the |12Loop|12 and the |12Rep|12 gadgets to access the Specify Value Requester (see Chapter 3 in the user manual). In this requester you can enter the number of times you want the specified sound to be repeated. The number 0 will cause the sound to repeat endlessly. Finally, you can use the volume control slider gadgets to adjust the volume. Preview the sound to make sure the volume is consistent with volumes of other sounds in the application. The range of index for volume selection is from 0 to 64. This setting overrides the volume settings in the Defaults (see Chapter 4 under the Project Menu for details on Defaults). |03 Synthesized Speech If you want to specify a filename first use the multistate gadget below the Memo field to select Filename as the option. Then use the |12Directory|12 gadget to open the File requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual) where you may specify the volume, drawer, and name of the file to be used. You may also click on the field below the Directory gadget and type in the desired filename. You can also specify the filename as a variable as described in Chapter 3 in the user manual. If you are entering a text string, type the desired text in the field. If you do this, be sure that the multistate gadget above the field is set to |12Text String|12. You can enter a maximum of 255 characters for text string. For longer text you must use a file. You may also enclose variable names in brackets for Speech to say. For example, if a variable is defined using the Variables icon as Number = "One" and you type in the Text field: The number is [Number] then the synthesized voice will say "The number is One" during play back. To set voice parameters in the speech requester you may use the three multistate gadgets on the right hand side. The top gadget lets you choose the Sex as |12Male|12 or |12Female|12; the next gadget below lets you select the speaker |11i.e.|11 |12Left|12, |12Right|12, or |12Stereo|12; the next one below lets you choose between |12Robotic|12 or |12Natural|12 voice. On the left side of the requester there are three gadgets. The first one is to turn |12Pause|12 On or Off. The default state is On. If Pause is On the speech is played back completely before the application moves on to the next icon in the flow. If Pause is Off then the speech is started and the application immediately also executes the action of the following icon. The next gadget below the Pause sets |12Enable|12 state to On or Off. If you are using a file and set Enable on, the parameters in the requester will override any found in the file. The multistate gadget below the Enable gadget is to specify |12Start|12 or |12Stop|12 of playback of speech. You can set the |12Volume|12 using the slider gadget. The range of volume index is from 0 for the lowest to 64 for the highest volume. This setting overrides the value specified in the Defaults option (see Chapter 4 in the User Manual). |12Pitch|12 refers to the tone of voice used. Use the slider gadget to set the desired pitch. The lowest index value for setting is 65 and the highest is 320. |12Rate|12 refers to the speed of the speech. Use the slider gadget to set the desired rate. The lowest index value of speed is 40 and the highest is 400. |04 Music The |12Directory|12 gadget opens the File requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual) where you specify the name of the music file to be played. You may also click on the |12Filename|12 field and type in the desired filename. You can also specify the filename as a variable as described in Chapter 3 in the user manual. The |12Pause|12 on state is set as default and it is useful if you want the project to wait until the music file has completed playing before performing the action of the next icon. If you want the icon following the music icon to execute immediately then set Pause state to Off. The |12MIDI Output|12 is set to On if you want the music to be played through a MIDI instrument. Currently a maximum of four MIDI channels are supported. Click on the multistate |12Start/Stop|12 gadget to specify whether you want to start or stop the music file. It may be necessary, for example, to stop the music file playback, if a user interrupts the music to ask for help. Once stopped, however, you cannot resume at that point after the completion of an interrupt. You have to start again at the beginning of the music file. You must specify an instrument path in the text field provided for this purpose. A music score file will not play back if AmigaVision cannot find the path for instruments in your disk. Instruments refer to digitized sounds from various instruments such as piano, cello, horn etc. that are used in your score file. Please refer to your music software manual for more information on instruments. Most music software available in the market should also allow you to sample your own sounds and create custom instruments. You can also specify an instrument path using the |12Defaults|12 option listed under |12Project|12 in the pulldown menu in the flow editor. If you have specified a default path it will be displayed in the field provided for the path. You can play back the music file repeatedly a number of times using the Loop feature. If you set the Loop state to on the Reps gadget will be activated and you can click on it to specify the loop count. The number 0 will cause the music to repeat endlessly. You can use the slider gadget to control the volume of the music. The range for the index value for volume control is 0 to 64. |05 Graphics Click on the |12Object Editor|12 gadget to enter the Object Editor (Chapter 5 in the user manual) where you will create the text and objects to be used on the screen. When you enter the Object Editor through the Graphics icon you will not be able to create hit boxes |11i.e.|11 objects with response strings. However, you can define actions such as visual and audio feedback. If you click on the |12Background|12 gadget, the objects are stamped into the background. This means that the objects will remain on the screen until the background is replaced (|11i.e.|11 by a Screen icon). If Background is not selected, objects will only remain on the screen until the actions of this icon and its siblings have been performed. There are four separate multistate gadgets under the heading of |12Color Cycle Control|12. Each of these refers to one of the color cycling ranges that was saved in the picture (IFF) file. You can control each of the first four ranges. Each of the multistate gadgets has four possible states. You can start the color cycling in the |12Forward|12 or the |12Reverse|12 direction; turn the cycling effect |12Off|12, or leave it unchanged (N/C) if it has been turned on by a previous Graphics icon. |06 Brush The |12Directory|12 gadget opens the File requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual) where you specify the name of the picture file to be displayed. You may also click on the |12Filename|12 field and type in the desired filename. The picture files include standard pictures, brushes, and animation. If you specify an animation file the first frame of the animation will be displayed. You can also specify the filename as a variable as described in Chapter 3 in the user manual. When you load an arbitrarily shaped brush on the screen, a rectangle enclosing the brush is shown as the default case. If you do not want this enclosing rectangle shown then set the |12Cookie Cut|12 gadget to the On state. Click on the multistate palette gadget to specify |12Current|12 or |12Override|12. If |12Current|12 is selected, the brush will be displayed using the current background palette. The |12Override|12 option which is the default, uses the brush palette, changing the existing colors of the background. |12Left|12 and |12Top|12 gadgets are used to specify the coordinates of the top left corner of the picture. Click on either gadgets to enter the Specify Value requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual). The coordinate value of 0,0 refers to the top left hand corner of the screen. You can specify negative values for the coordinates if you want to show just part of the brush. Click on the |12Transitions|12 gadget to specify the screen pattern to be used when switching pictures. The Transitions requester (Chapter 3 in the user manual) is presented. All effects except for the Fades are available for transitions within the area of the brush. Fades work on the whole screen rather than on the area of the brush. |07 Video Select |12Pause|12 to cause the application to wait until the video is finished before executing the next icon in the outline. There are four multistate gadgets, representing |12Vid