User's Guide - Projects
AutoPlay Media Studio projects are designed to simplify resource management as much as possible. There are two kinds of resources that you need to manage in any project: internal resources, and external resources.
In AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0, when you created an Image Object, you would go to the object's properties and reference a file from your system like "C:\MyImages\MyFace.bmp". That reference would then be stored in the project file "as-is." Everything was fine so long as your project always had access to that file in that exact same location.
As soon as you tried to take your project to another computer, however, you would run into problems. What if that computer didn't have that same image, or if it did, what if it wasn't located in the same "C:\MyImages" folder? What if that computer didn't even have a "C:\MyImages" folder?
And even if you left the project where it was...what if you came back to work on it a few months later, only to find that some of the images and sounds that the project needs have been inadvertently moved from their original locations and are now "lost"?
In AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0, we wanted to make it easier to keep all of your project's internal resources together. The answer was the Resources folder. This folder is automatically created inside the project folder, and any files that you bring into the project as internal references are stored there. The files are even sorted into appropriate subfolders (Images, Videos, Audio, etc.) for you.
This makes the project a lot harder to "break" because the project doesn't need to access the original files any more; AutoPlay essentially makes its own copy of each file that you reference, and stores it with the project, so you don't have to worry about changing or misplacing or deleting the original file. AutoPlay no longer needs it!
If you prefer things the old way, you can override this behaviour by clearing the Copy to Resources folder checkbox on the file selection screen. Of course, doing so means you'll have to make sure not to delete, edit or misplace the original file...or you won't be able to build your project any more.
Another problem many users had in version 3.0 was not knowing what files they needed to include separately on their CD-ROM, and which files AutoPlay Menu Studio 3.0 would "build into" the final generated build.
There are two parts to this problem: knowing what files to distribute, and telling the difference between internal and external resources.
AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 solves this by giving each project a Distribution folder. Anything that you want to distribute with your application needs to go in the Distribution folder first. Everything in AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 has been optimized to make it incredibly easy to add external references to files...if they are already in your Distribution folder. There is a very good reason for this. By encouraging you to gather all of the files that your project needs into one place, AutoPlay will actually help prevent you from forgetting to distribute any required files with your project.
When it comes time to build your project, the application (and all of its internal resources) is built into the Distribution folder as well. Everything you need to distribute—including the application and all of the resources it needs—will be in a single, convenient, easy to locate place.
AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 solves this by letting you explicitly state whether a file is an internal resource (that will be built into the application for you), or an external resource (that you will need to include with the application yourself).
This is where all those External reference check boxes come in. You control whether a file is an internal or an external file, by setting or clearing the External reference checkbox when you add the file.
(For some objects, the checkbox is permanently "locked" to on or off; those objects can only handle internal or external references, and not both.)
These two folders—the Resources folder, where all the internal resources are kept; and the Distribution folder, where all of the external resources must go—are stored together inside the project folder.
AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0 creates a project folder whenever you start a new project. The project folder is given the same name that you gave the project. This is also where the project file is located. (The project file is where all of the project settings, page layouts and object properties are stored.)
If you start a new project and name it "Grandpa's Old-Tyme Root Beer", a project folder will be created called "Grandpa's Old-Tyme Root Beer". Inside that folder, a project file will be created, named "Grandpa's Old-Tyme Root Beer.am4". A Resources folder and Distribution folder will also be created in the "Grandpa's Old-Tyme Root Beer" project folder.
In short, everything that the project requires will be contained in the project folder.
Now, the nice part about all of this is that it makes your project very portable and independent of its original references. Want to bring an entire project somewhere? Just Zip up the project folder with all of its contents.
All of these things combine to make resource management much, much easier in AutoPlay Media Studio 4.0.
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