Welcome to the Episode Stack for Dr. Who. version 1.5. This document contains late breaking changes since the Episode Help Stack was uploaded to this electronic service. Of most importance to users of Dr. Who 1.02 is the import button, which is NOT described in the Help Stack.
EPISODES v1.5 REQUIRES AT LEAST 2MEGS OF RAM
Sorry, Whovians, but increased power and ease of use has its price. In this case, at least 2 megs of RAM. No, this is not a plot by the MASTER. I've attempted to squeeze as much functionality into the stack as I could without making it too big. Alas, The High Council decreed a 1 meg version was not to be.
The problem: creating menus takes memory away from HyperCard, with less memory available, you can't play those big sounds. Additionally, the VideoClip stacks, when viewed from the Episodes stack, take memory away from HyperCard. Each grayscale picture in the VideoClip stack takes approximately 65K away from HyperCard as they are viewed. If you were to view say 6 pictures, one after the other, from a single VideoClip stack, HyperCard would loose approximately 390K of breathing room! On a 1 Meg machine, you only have about 330K of breathing room (heapspace) available when you open the Episodes stack. When the floating pallet containging the VideoClip pictures is closed, it gives back to HyperCard whatever memory it had taken as you used the pallet. Thus, if you attempt to run Episodes 1.5 on a 1Meg machine, sometime during your session you are likely to get the dreaded Out of Memory dialog.
SO.......a word to the wise. Have at least 2megs of memory. Be aware that INITS, especially startup pictures and startup sounds take up RAM on startup. Those pictures and sounds just sit in RAM doing very little. When it comes time for Episodes 1.5 to open, there is even less RAM available that normal. So if you have a 2 meg machine or greater and you have sound problems (sounds don't play when sound > 0) or VideoClip stack pictures seem to be missing or you get the dreaded Out of Memory dialog, look thru your System Folder and pull out INITS that are not absolutely required. If you are running under Multifinder, up the memory partition for HyperCard to at least 1800K (in the Info box).
IMPORTING YOUR VERSION 1.02 STACK
The Import button (the 3D looking button at bottom left of the episode cards, down arrow) is the button to use to import (download, as it were) the TEXT contents of your Dr. Who 1.02 stack into the new 1.5 format! Due to the fact that all characters (Doctors, Companions, Villains, etc) were placed in a single field in version 1.02 and that they now appear as either Doctors or all other cast in the new version in separate fields, the import button will place ALL of your old characters into a single field in the 1.5 version—the other cast field. You will need to manually unlock the Doctors field and the Other Cast field after importing and then cut and paste the doctors into the Doctors field in version 1.5! Sorry about that, but it is impossible to foresee all spellings of the Doctors and devise an automated import!
So if you have the Episode Stack for Dr. Who 1.5 (with none of my episodes in it) and you want to import your old stack, you should do so with some CAUTION. Work with a COPY of your old and your new stacks. The import button does just that, it just imports. It does not check for duplicate episode cards! Nor does it overwrite existing cards. It creates new cards from your old stack (or from a VideoClips stack that has episode info in version 1.5 format). New episode cards are place in the stack AFTER the card on which you pressed the import button. The Import button has some intellegence. It knows the difference between all stacks that conform to the Episode 1.5 format and those that don't. You will be warned if you are attempting to import from a stack that is not in 1.5 format. If you are importing from your old Dr. Who 1.02, just go ahead and import following the warning.
Notes to those who have reprogrammed their Dr. Who 1.02 stacks:
If you have changed the names of the backgrounds in version 1.02, the import button will fail. If you have deleted or renamed any of the background fields on episode cards in your version 1.02, the import will fail. REMEMBER, work with a COPY of your version 1.5 stack when importing!!!!!
The import button uses the lockmessages command to prevent any of your scripts from executing while the import is in progress. No code changes are made to your old stack by the import. If you are a bit paranoid (a Whovian trait), just set the can't modify property of your 1.02 stack to true (Protect stack from the File menu) before you try the import.
IMPORTING SOUNDS
Unless you are importing sounds from a SoundsForEpisodes stack, you will need to write your own scripts to play newly imported sounds. In the case of the forthcomming SoundsForEpisodes stacks, the stacks will contain the sound and an installer button to modify scripts of buttons such as K9, Daleks, etc. to add more sounds for them to say. This method is intended to give users of the Episode stack 1.5 an al a carte method for building their own custom Episodes stack(s).
For those of you with the older Dr. Who 1.02 stack, you can use your old sounds in the new version 1.5. Use the Episodes menu to import the sounds from your old stack (one at a time) or if you are handy with ResEdit or Rescopy, simply move the sounds that came with version 1.02 to your new stack. Don't change their names. There is NO need to write scripts for these sounds, the scripts are already written and waiting in buttons for your to press. Version 1.5 uses the Fplay command from Farallon. So if you have a MacRecorder, you can create your own sounds and compress them if desired, save them into version 1.5 and play them (if you can write the scripts.)
A WORD ABOUT CHARACTERS STACK
It will be a while before the Characters Stack is ready. It may be a month or more (Aug or Sept. 1990) before it is uploaded.
A WORD ABOUT SoundsForEpisodes STACKS
There will be a series of sound stacks uploaded in the near future (weeks) that will let you customize your Theme sound: each Doctor's theme will be uploaded. You pick the theme you like best: Hartnell,Troughton, Pertwee,Tom Baker,Davidson,Colin Baker,Sylvester McCoy. Also a variety of K9 sounds will be forthcomming. Send suggestions if you really want to hear something!
Please report bugs to:
J.Sims on GEnie, JimSims on America On Line, U1523 on AppleLink
Have fun with your new Episode stack. Send E-mail if you have requests for VideoClip stacks of your favorite episodes!
