Problems with mouse clicks

[somersetpaddy]

Hi - this is a bug in 3.0.3.0.

Occasionally, in MCQs and Communications it won't respond to mouse clicks for a while, then does. I was told this was happening when a couple of
colleagues tested it elsewhere, but I've not seen it before. Keystrokes seem ok.

A bit about the test machines:

Both running web version (it's always ok locally)
Seems better running XP + IE on a Mac than Vista + Firefox on PC
Anything to do with graphica capability of the machines? The Mac has high quality card; PC is relatively poor (although brand new)
Was first noticed on Communications interactions, but I've got it happening on MCQs

Anything you can do to help? I've got 3.1.2.0 on another machine. Haven't tried it in that yet 'cos of problems transferring files over.

[Neville]

Hi Patrick

We have seen this previously where the display size differs from the window size and the buttons become offset.

Are you keeping the defaults for display size?
Are the games exhibiting this publicly available so our dev team can have a look?

Neville

[somersetpaddy]

Thanks Neville - here's the link http://patrickdunn.squarespace.com/stor ... eneric.htm

Could be screen size, but what's odd is that the buttons appear to know I've clicked them; they just don't respond.

I'll have a look at screen size, and I'm also shifting it all over to the later version of TW.

Patrick

[somersetpaddy]

I've been looking at this and it appears to only be a significant problem in my first big scene. A later scene works nearly ok. Could it be something to do with the size of the scene, or its complexity? I'm wondering whether I've left something going on in the background that's taking up resources. I've noticed 3D movement in the troubelsome scene also isn't as fluent.

[Neville]

Hi Patrick

It could be a resource / size problem as you've mentioned.

I've taken the liberty of taking your data file (after it downloaded to my PC), hosting on the TW servers and am launching it using the latest 3D engine code:

http://www.thinkingworlds.com/testbuild/generic.htm

I seem to be getting a better response but not perfect. How do you think it compares?

I will ask one of the development team to have a look now we have it hosted here.

Neville

[somersetpaddy]

Thanks Neville - that is quite a bit better; certainly presentable. Please don't spend any more time on this, unless it's an issue you'd like to get a handle on anyway. It could well be poor construction on my part.

If it's ok with you I'm going to issue that link as part of a blog entry. It certainly works well enough to be usable.

Patrick

[Neville]

Good to hear it is an improvement Patrick.

Rather than point your blog at our temporary hosting areas (always subject to change) it would be safer for you to replace the generic.htm and generic.dcr files in your own game. This will then point to the latest 3D engine code. I've uploaded teh currenct versions to:

http://www.thinkingworlds.com/downloads/tw312files.zip

I know you are thinking about upgrading Thinking Worlds. You might want to wait until next Friday. This is the planned release date for Thinking Worlds 3.2 which has a host of new features.

Neville

[somersetpaddy]

Thanks Neville - that's working nearly perfectly now; certainly good enough for the demo. Brilliant!!!

[cbibeau]

Hi all,
I know this is an old posting related to an older version of TW, but I encountered a very similar problem with 3.3.6 and had to solve it by fidgeting with the htm script. So I think I should share my findings:

Depending on the screen resolution you are using, when a TW game is deployed on the net, the generic htm script will, by default, set the movie to the 0,0 coordinates of the browser, display it in 1024 x 768 dimensions and set the overall positioning of the content of the movie to “fill” the screen. Therefore, if you are running your display in any other resolution than 1024 X 768, everything will look ok in your browser skin, but in fact some items (like clickable buttons hotspots) will be positioned elsewhere in your page.

To counteract this effect and prevent any remote-user with any type of screen configuration to encounter this shift between appearance and hotspots, we decided to set the default movie display to “full screen” (or 100%) and to reposition all the content to the “stage” of the browser, instead of the screen.

1- This has the advantage of forcing the end-user to select full screen mode instead of windowed mode (because the scroll bars disappear, and it is not possible to see the whole content of the 1024 x 768 movie in windowed mode), and therefore getting the TW movie refreshed to coords 0.0, to current display dimensions and to reposition all the items to the browser stage.
2- But it has the inconvenient of not allowing to see the whole content of the movie when the end-user’s resolution is smaller than 1024 x 768. If this is your case, you can always skip the re-scripting to full screen and keep the default settings.
So here is the script we used (modifications highlighted in red):

if ( tShockwaveFound ) {
var szParamStr = GetLMSValue();
document.write('<object classid="clsid:233C1507-6A77-46A4-9443-F871F945D258"');
document.write(' codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/director/sw.cab#version=11,5,0,593"');
document.write(' ID=Generic name=Generic WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=100% VIEWASTEXT>');
document.write('<PARAM NAME=src VALUE="generic.dcr">');
document.write('<PARAM NAME=swText VALUE="IE">');
document.write('<PARAM NAME=sw1 VALUE="' + szParamStr + '">');
document.write('<PARAM NAME=swStretchStyle VALUE=stage>');
document.write('<param name=PlayerVersion value=11>');
document.write('<PARAM NAME=bgColor VALUE=#FFFFFF>');
document.write('<PARAM NAME=swRemote VALUE="');
document.write("swSaveEnabled='true' swVolume='true' swRestart='true' swPausePlay='true' swFastForward='true' swContextMenu='true' ");
document.write('">\n');
document.write("<EMBED SRC='generic.dcr' swText='Firefox' ");
document.write(' bgColor=#FFFFFF name=Generic sw1="' + szParamStr + '" sw2="' + cookieData + '" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=100% swStretchStyle=stage ');
document.write('swRemote="');
document.write("swSaveEnabled='true' swVolume='true' swRestart='true' swPausePlay='true' swFastForward='true' swContextMenu='true' ");
document.write('"');
document.write(' TYPE="application/x-director" PlayerVersion=11 pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/download/">');
document.write('</EMBED>');
document.write('</OBJECT>');

} else if (!(navigator.appName && navigator.appName.indexOf("Netscape")>=0 && navigator.appVersion.indexOf("2.")>=0)){
document.write('A newer version of Shockwave must be installed to display this content. Please update your Shockwave installation.');
}


Hope this helps someone else
Cheers

[Alan]

Thanks for taking the time to post that, it should be very helpful in future