Multimedia Fusion 2
From FusionWiki
Multimedia Fusion 2 or MMF2 is a software developed by Clickteam primarily designed for creating applications and computer games. The three versions of the software -- The Games Factory 2, Multimedia Fusion 2 Standard and Multimedia Fusion 2 Developer -- all share the basic characteristics and functions, but differ somewhat in their capabilities relating to features, runtime exports and available extensions.
Multimedia Fusion 2 (depending on the version and add-ons purchased) is capable of building:
- Windows EXE files (Standard runtime)
- Java JAR files (Java runtime)
- Flash Player SWF files (Flash Player runtime)
- Mobile JAR files (Mobile runtime)
- Vitalize! files (Vitalize runtime)
Other planned runtimes:
- A Python runtime is currently being developed by Mathias Kærlev of AquadaSoft
- iPhone, Android and HTML5 runtimes are currently in development by Clickteam
This page discusses basic elements of the Multimedia Fusion 2 software below. For the differences between the three versions of the software, please consult the product comparison page. For more information on the different runtimes, please consult the runtimes page.
The latest stable build of MMF2 is 249. A changelog is also available.
Contents |
Storyboard editor
The storyboard editor lists all frames in an application and provides certain information about them, including their title and dimensions.
Frame editor
Frames
Frames correspond to the different screens of your application. They can be levels of a game, chapters in a multimedia presentation, etc. Let's take a simple game as an example : the first frame would be the title page, the second frame would be the game itself, and the third frame would be the high score table. Frames contain objects, and events.
Objects
Objects, placed in frames in the Frame editor, are at the core of Multimedia Fusion 2 functions: they are the different "actors" of an application. Multimedia Fusion 2 contains many different objects to suit different tasks. For example, the Active Object (the most versatile of objects with its vast amount of possible uses), would be used as a character in a game, the String Object to display some text, the Button Object in a dialog box, and so on.
Objects each contain a number of different properties for customization and control. Ink effects and -- in the Hardware-accelerated PC Runtime -- Pixel shaders can be used to determine how an object will appear on the screen.
Objects can be assigned Movements, with speed properties to describe how fast an object is moving. Every movement has a speed property, and all of them share the same unit: 0.125 pixels per frame. (For example, an object with a Bouncing Ball movement moving at speed 60 is moving exactly 7.5 pixels per frame.) Directions control the movement and animation of an object, with a maximum of 32 directions per animation.
Finally, objects also have a number of conditions, actions and expressions to control them in the Event editor (see below).
'Species' of objects in Multimedia Fusion 2 are also known as Extensions -- Clickteam users are constantly creating new extensions to add more variety to what Multimedia Fusion 2 applications can do. To learn more about what extensions are available for the program, check out the central Extensions article.
As well as having many included extensions and additional Bonus Pack addons Clickteam also offers users a Software Development Kit (SDK) to allow for Extension Development.
Event editor
Below is the basic overview of how the Event editor works. For more details on Events, Conditions, Actions and Expressions, please see the separate article on Events.
Events
The logic of your application is defined with events - they replace traditional programming languages with a simple yet very powerful point and click interface. An example of some events:
| 1 |
2 | This is a comment, used to explain what events do | 3 | |
An important note to make is the order in which your events are. If you were to have:
| 1 |
2 | |
The active would never be invisible!
Why not? Well, when the button is clicked, at first the active is visible, so the conditions of the first line are met and the object is made invisible. But, now that the object is invisible, the other line's conditions are met, and it's made visible again before the display is refreshed. So you don't even see it change.
A better way to do such a change would be to use flags:
| 1 |
2 | Toggling the internal flag will switch it "on" and "off", which we can then use to make it visible or invisible | 3 | 4 | |
Conditions
A condition is a question that can be true or false. For example, "Is key A pressed?" is a condition, and it will be true when your application is running if the user presses the key A.
An event can contain more than one condition one after the other: they must all be true at the same time for the event to be true.
When all the conditions of an event are true, the actions are executed.
Actions
An action is a task to perform when the conditions are true, for example: "Add 10 to score of player 1". An event can contain more than one action - in this case, they will be executed one after the other, with the exception of certain special case actions such as "Start loop", which will be executed at the end of the list of actions.
Event list editor
The event list editor has the same function as the event editor, but displays lists all actions of an event. That way, you can easily change the order of certain actions and have a better overview of your code.
Toolbars
Properties
The properties toolbar is a list of different settings (options, texts, colors, fonts etc.) that define the behaviour of things like the application, the frame and the objects, depending on what is selected.
Workspace
The workspace toolbar displays a hierarchy of all the applications, their frames, and their objects, which may be organised into folders.
File types related to Multimedia Fusion 2
MFA
MFA, which stands for Multimedia Fusion Application, is the edittime file format for Multimedia Fusion 2 games and applications. Saving from Multimedia Fusion 2 creates an MFA file, for storage or for sharing with others. The format is also used by The Games Factory 2 and uses the same extension. An application made in any of the three products can be opened in TGF2, as long as only features compatible with TGF2 are used (with the exception of alpha channels, which will be removed). Any MFA file can be opened in any of the applications as long as there aren't any extension conflicts.
MFX
MFX, which stands for Multimedia Fusion Extension, is the file format for Multimedia Fusion 2 extensions. MFX files are Windows DLL files with a custom file extension.
MFW
Projects in Multimedia Fusion 2 are a set of applications, loaded all at once and listed in the workspace toolbar. The project files are saved on the disk with the MFW extension, while each application of the project is saved in its own MFA file.
Further core elements of Multimedia Fusion 2
- Collisions are events that take place when two objects collide in the application. They constitute many basic game events.
- Binary Data is any data embedded in the application, such as music and sample files. It is also possible to include custom binary data, for which this article provides the basics.
