RE: FLASH: Interactive cd rom help needed, please...

[Rey, Chrissy]

>1) If we are not going to use our creation on the web, do we still need to

>worry about these issues?  Some of our animations are very complex and cpu

>intensive;  sometimes 30-40 animated objects all moving at once and we have

>had some problems with maintaining fps.  Any suggestions?


If you're creating your movies on a pretty beefy computer, and still having problems with the fps, then you can rest assured that your end-users will be twiddling their thumbs as they wait for your animations to move.  While you don't have to worry so much about the filesize (at least, not as compared to the web) when it comes to creating a CD with Flash, you do still need to consider most of the other optimization factors.  One thing I do when checking an animation for smoothness is test it on the junkiest computer we have in the office (P120 with 24MB RAM), and then play with it a bit until it looks halfway decent on there.  However I'm lucky because I know that none of my end-users will have anything worse than that (YAY DoJ!)


>2) If we put the finished product into a shockwave player to run

>independently on the cd rom, are there any special considerations that we

>need to be aware of?


You may want to just use a Flash projector if it's going to be run independently from the CD player.  This lets end-users see your product even if they don't have the Flash Player or Shockwave plug-in.   To create a projector, open the movie in the stand-alone and select File|Create Projector.


>3) Can we utilize audio (voice and music) from a source other than flash and

>easily get flash to interact with the third party software?  Or do we need

>to use a program like director, etc. to bring this all together and

>accomplish this?


You can have limited interactivity with 3rd party software from the projector (or stand-alone).  Basically it's limited to opening the program and opening files in the program *grin*  I guess it really just depends on what exactly you're trying to do :)  


>4) Can anyone suggest some direction of where I might go to be able to learn

>more about this process?


You may want to consider using something other than Flash for your project, especially if you require extensive interaction with other programs, not to mention the amount of stuff going on in your animations.  If however you'd like to continue using Flash for development, you might want to check out Flashlite.net (http://www.flashlite.net) for loads of information on making CDs with Flash (just click the "CD Stuff" link when you get into the site).  I am also in the process of making a large-scale CD with Flash (it has only limited interaction outside of the projector, and the animations have been optimized like crazy!) so if you have any additional questions feel free to ask :)


Chrissy Rey

Web Developer

United States Trustee Program

United States Dept. of Justice

chrissy [dot] reyusdoj [dot] gov

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