Customer Reviews

Lingo and Shockwave Sourcebook

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I found this book well written and interesting. The authors introduce Lingo in an easy-to-understand and interesting way, although if you're a total novice in Lingo scripting, you might find the example projects used in this book a bit overwhelming. I have some Lingo programming experience prior to reading this book, so I was able to follow the examples pretty well, and I also learned some useful tips and tricks from this book. One downside about this book is that the book was published in 1996 or 1997, and was written probably for Director 5 originally. I encountered some problems when I tried to run some of the examples on Director 8. I wish the authors will update examples in this book.

Some of the pre produced scores have mistakes. The author goes into great detail in parts of projects and then completely ignores other points leaving the reader baffled at times. The book references frames in the score without referencing the channel they are in. The author must think points like this are obvious, but since this is a learning manual he presumes too much. In one exercise the author uses a trick to highlight sprites on the stage using a one pixel sprite as a place holder and then switching the highlighted sprites with this single place holder. The trick is in setting the registration point in strategic locations on the highlighted sprites. The author however, never explains how one can accurately set these registration points, leaving the reader quite frustrated. In a direct quote from the book "As of this point, the sequence of frames that the movie will play at startup is 1,2,85,86,87,89,3,4..." which would be fine except the sequence should include frame 88 also, and it does, which leaves the reader very confused if he doesn't understand that this is just another mistake in the text. The book states that the author can be contacted through a link at the website of their publisher. I never found the link and when I sent an e-mail to the publisher I never received a reply. Compared to the last Director/Lingo instruction book I studied (Macromedia Director 6 and Lingo Authorized) this book is lame, however I am an admitted newbie, but then isn't that the point? The feeling I got from this book is that it wasn't written by a "teacher" but if you are intuitive and have no problem reading between the lines you'll be O.K. (you might even learn by working through the inconsistencies). If however, you need specific, concise instruction (like I do) this book might not be for you.