Office of Digital Humanities

DigHT 210

Messages Exercise

Card 1: Practice with open and close messages.

Card 2: Practice with keyboard messages.

Card3: Mind Reader

This exercise is designed to give you practice with a number of messages in LiveCode. Copy the MessagesEx stack in the Templates folder to your disk and rename it YourName--MessagesEx. This exercise is on the first card of that stack.

In this simple application, make the controller buttons reveal each character's textual response to the cook's question.

1. Thought Fields: Create a transparent field to fit each character's thought balloon. Choose suitable font/size/alignment attributes and give each field a name. Type in appropriate responses to the question, then lock the text of each field.
2. Add handlers to the four controller buttons to reveal the character's thoughts by showing the corresponding field in the following manner:
   1. Cat: Show the appropriate field when the button is clicked. hide the field when the button is double clicked.
   2. Girl: Show the appropriate field when the button is pressed down, then hide the field when the button is released (inside or outside the buton.)
   3. Bunny (or bear): Show the appropriate field when the cursor enters the button area and hide the field when the cursor leaves.
   4. Boy: Flash the appropriate field as long as the mouse button is down inside the button area. Hint: do one show/wait/hide cycle for each time the message occurs. Hide the field when the mouse is released.

Again, don't get hung up on the game too much, as it's relatively mindless. Just follow the instructions carefully to make it work. As with all other assignments, this exercise is designed to give you practice implementing the concepts in the reading and discussed in class. The quality of learning you reap from this assignment will result directly from the amount of effort you expend trying to get it to work successfully.

Card 4: Answer some questions about the use of message handlers in this stack.

This assignment is due by the beginning of class on the due date specified in the class schedule.

Messages Lecture