Old guy needs a bit of help - creating for multiple distribution platforms

[Chris_D]

I need a bit of guidance from all you younger, more computer savvy types.

I started with the Click products back when it was Corel Click and Create then moved on to MMF1 etc. I am getting back into using MMF2(2.5) for developing multimedia applications ( I know, boring compared to games but I enjoy it).

My question has to do with creating applications for use on a variety of systems. In the "old days" the application could run on a PC, or with vitalize, on a web browser. Today, there are many more platforms for which to run applications.

Most of my application is essentially a media viewer showing: Photos, Videos, and PDF documents. I included a simple Doodle application so sales guys can make crude drawings to explain concepts etc. I also added in the email object so that they could email a brochure to a customer.

My original intent for this application was to be an "electronic brochure" to be used at trade shows running on a kiosk. As our products are too large to bring all of them to the trade show, we needed the salesman to be able to show the non-displayed products in an interesting way.

Once I showed a couple of the salesman the prototype, they started hitting me with questions I couldn't answer. They suggested having a web version, then an I-Pad version, etc.

Vitalize would have been a good choice back in the day, but now I see there are all sorts of export modules and even Java. Vitalize, now located in the "Retired Products" folder indicates to me that is probably not the direction I should go.

Based on the above, what do you folks recommend I do?

Chris

[happygreenfrog]

Java and Vitalize are both considered retired products in Clickteam Fusion 2.5. What extensions are you using? That is an important thing to know before I can tell you what runtimes you can port your game to, and if there are any alternatives to the extensions you are using that are compatible with certain other platforms (E.G. if you use, say, the Overlay Redux object for drawing, then I would tell you to use the Surface object to get your program ported to Flash (and possibly more runtimes in the future if the Surface object gets ported to other runtimes (and I sure hope that it does))).

[Chris_D]

Hi, Thanks for responding.

Most of what is used are the basics:

Active picture
INI (only needed for email application)
File
Edit box
Static text
Draw object (for a doodle pad)
List view
Email
Quicktime (or could use other video format)
Active X (to display Adobe acrobat files)

I believe that covers the bulk of what I am using considering the whole purpose of the application is to display: Photos, Videos, PDF documents.

Chris

[happygreenfrog]

Let's see here...

Here are the extensions you are using that I don't believe are compatible with very many/any runtimes other than Windows:

Quicktime
Active X
List view
Draw object

In the case of the draw object, you can use the Surface object instead. You should, actually. The Surface object is better in virtually every way, and it might let you make a better drawing program as well. It won't make your app compatible with all runtimes, but at least it will be compatible with Flash, then. As for the List view object, I think you would have to hand re-create it using other objects (such as Active objects), unfortunately, or simply making that feature in particular Windows-only. For the Active X object, I'm not sure that the ability to view PDFs is possible for every runtime anyway (it might be, though). As for Quicktime, there are plenty of runtime-specific video objects, but none that are cross-platform (yet) to my knowledge. You may have to re-make any video-playing parts of your app for each runtime, as far as I know.

There are some objects that are limited in use for some runtimes, mainly:

Active Picture

The Active picture object can't be used fully for every runtime for reasons that may be obvious (Flash, for example, won't let you access images from the user's computer, period, not just in MMF2 (I'm not sure the Active picture object can be used in the Flash runtime at all, to be honest)).

There is one object that you listed that isn't compatible with all runtimes, that is compatible with most of them. The File object can't work in Flash for the same reason that the Active picture object is limited in use/not compatible with the Flash runtime: Flash doesn't let you save to anything outside of a special folder on a user's computer, and it only lets you save and load in a special format (if I remember correctly, anyway).

And there is one object that I'm not sure about: The E-mail object. I have no idea what runtimes it is compatible with. I think it might be compatible with the Android runtime, for example, but even then I'm not sure.

So, in conclusion, here are the only objects that you listed that you can use in most/a significant amount of runtimes:

Active Picture (can't be used in Flash (to my knowledge), can only load images from binary data/the web in some/most runtimes)
INI (pretty much every runtime supports it, even Flash (then again, I think that Flash doesn't support the E-mail object, so I'm not sure how much good that will do you))
File (can't be used in Flash (to my knowledge), possibly not compatible with a few other runtimes as well)
Edit box (I do believe that this is one of those rare and awesome objects that is for sure compatible with every runtime)
Static text (should be compatible with most runtimes, and, in the runtimes it isn't supported in (if there are any such runtimes), it should be easily replaced with something else)

And the ones that aren't:

Draw object (replace it with the Surface object, and then at least you've gotten Flash support for the drawing feature, which is a start)
List view (no alternatives that I can think of other than making a custom one out of active objects, but even that might not work very well)
E-mail (might be compatible with other runtimes, but I can't be too sure about that)
Quicktime (there is no way this is ever going to be compatible with anything other than Windows (and, when it is out, possibly the Mac runtime as well), since it is a PC-specific thing in general)
Active X (same deal as Quicktime, except for the fact that it is even less likely to be ported to the Mac runtime when it is out, since I'm not sure Macs support Active X controls at all (Macs do support Quicktime, though))

I think that quite a few new extensions would need to be made before you could port your app to other devices, unfortunately. First off, a cross-platform video object (which would almost certainly be difficult to make). Second off, some object that can view photos on a user's device on Android and iOS (also could be difficult to make, if not impossible (I have no idea, though)). Third off, a cross-platform PDF object (there was one in development, but development on it seems to be stopped as of now (the developer of the object is still around, though, so it might get finished one day)).

I may have missed a few things, and, as I don't have the iOS exporter, I'm not completely certain about what objects are and aren't compatible with the iOS exporter, so there may be a few objects that I didn't think were compatible with it that are compatible with it, and a few objects that I thought were compatible with it that aren't compatible with it, but I think that all of them that I listed as compatible with it are compatible with it, and I think that it should give you the general idea on what objects you are using are compatible with what runtimes.

[Chris_D]

Thanks much for all the insight, I guess I am going to have to re-think this product or simply limit it to what my original intention was and that is for it to run on a PC.

Chris