FAQ
Min. SW requirements:
Windows 95, 98, 2000, XP (Windows ME is not recommended
but usable;)
DirectX 6 or higher (for Video playback)
Windows Media Player 6.2 or higher (and appropriated
codecs) - mainly if you use WMA, WMV, ASF or MPEG4
files
Min. HW requirements:
CPU (x86 comp.) - Intel/AMD 300MHz - (550MHz or better is
recommended)
32MB RAM (playback) - 64MB RAM (development) - (128MB
is recommended)
Sound card - it's not required if you don't use sound
Enough disk space for unpacking the embedded files and swapping.
What OS are supported?
MMB and the applications you create with it works on
Windows Platform. It works on Windows 95, Windows 98,
Windows 2000 and Windows XP. MMB can works also with
Windows NT4 and Windows ME, but we do not recommend to use
these OS because of two reasons...
- Windows NT is simply too old and doesn't fully support
DirectX (required for Sound&Video)
- Windows ME is not very reliable OS, especially the HW
drivers are not well optimized. In other words, Windows ME
often crashes (from our own experience).
Is there a version for MAC or
Linux?
Do I have to pay any
royalties?
What is the upgrade
policy?
Currently the upgrades are free of charge. You simply
install any new version over the previous and it should
pick-up your registration.
Can I distribute the files I
create?
Yes. If you are registered user, you can distribute your
files free of any royalties etc...
Is there a book about MMB?
We are not aware of any book about MMB. However, MMB may
be mentioned in books about multimedia generally. The best
place to learn MMB is looking at a many samples on this or
many others web pages dedicated to MMB. Also Discussion
Board is a great help.
What is the recommended graphic
application to make my artwork?
We recommend
Real-DRAW
Pro because it is the only program where you can make
a fully functional page with buttons and then export it to
MMB. However you can use other tools as a PaintShop Pro,
PhotoShop etc...
What is autorun?
When a CD-ROM disk is inserted into the drive the Windows
examines the disk looking for file autorun.inf .The
autorun.inf is a simple ASCII text file and could be
edited just with the notepad and it tells windows what
program to run and what icon to show for the drive when it
appears in the My Computer folder.
What are the lines in
autorun.inf?
Inside the autorun.inf file you will see lines:
[autorun]
OPEN=autorun.exe
ICON=autorun.exe,0
The autorun.inf file must be on the root of the CD.
However, you can even put that file to the root of a
harddrive and then your icon of the harddrive will
change.
Note: You can use for the icon directly icon file
if you want so the third line will look like:
ICON=myico.ico
How to enable Autorun on my
computer?
Select Start Button, then Settings > Control panel.
Doubleclick on System. Select Device Manager tab, expand
the CD-ROM entry, click on appropriate CD-ROM drive and
click Properties. Select Settings tab and finally check
the "Auto insert notification" box.a
Trick: If you as an user don't want the AutoRun
application to start when you inserting new CD, hold down
the Shift key while you insert the CD!
Why Autorun still doesn't work on some computers?
Make sure the that the Autorun is enabled on that computers. If you are
sure that autorun is enabled on these computers, but the CD still won't
auto-start, or MMB reports an error (something like "cannot find the
file.."), the most probably reason of this problem is a long file name
of exe or file name with empty spaces. Simply keep the length of file name
of compiled exe in 8+3 format (8 characters for name and 3 for extension)
and don't use empty spaces inside the file name!
If I want to make an audio CD with
digital multimedia track, what is the format and software to
do it?
The industry standard format is CD Extra. In this
format, the audio tracks are recorded in the first session
and the second session is the data. You can create
CD-Extra with most of the mastering software, Adaptec Easy
CD Creator for example.
There is a also an older format named Mixed Mode
CD. On such CD the audio and data are recorded in the
same session where the data are as a track 1 with
following audio tracks. The disadvantage of this is that a
CD player can play a CD from track 2 skipping the track 1.
Why I can't play Audio Tracks from
my CD-ROM?
You can't play Redbook audio (regular CD audio tracks) and
read files off the CD at the same time. Redbook audio
tracks are streamed off the CD at 1x speed. If your drive
is faster than 1x (let's hope so), it actually slows down
to play Redbook.
Most games do one of two things:
-
Copy all game files to the hard disk during install.
This ensures the fastest possible loading times, brisk
play, and huge installs (Baldur's Gate install is over
500MB).
-
Read all necessary data off the CD before starting the
Redbook track. If your level/map/whatever data is
small enough to fit entirely in RAM, you can get away
with this.
MMB actually offers a third strategy: embed your data.
This means your data gets unzipped to a temporary
directory each time you run. If possible, I would
recommend not using this option unless absolutely
necessary.
I would probably use MP3s, since they are already so
nicely supported by MMB. This sort of depends on what kind
of machines you need to run on and how CPU intensive the
rest of your project is. MP3s can eat some clock cycles,
Redbook audio is free.
How to Shut-Down computer from
script?
...or Open Sound properties or...
Here is a description file which
allows you to do a lot of stuff with rundll32 command.
Why my video doesn't play on
other computer?
Welcome to the real world of video on PC. The video on PC
is a complex issue so we add an extended
Video FAQ.
Why my video doesn't play using
MCI commands or MCI object while it plays fine in Windows
Media Player?
If the format is fine (previous Question) then make sure
the video file has no space in its name. Since MCI
internally comunicates using string, the space in the file
name may be interpreted as beginning of another command.
As such My Video.mpg may be wrongly interpreted,
the myvideo.mpg should work. The best would be if
you can rename the file using the simple 8.3 dos type and
make sure there are no spaces or any strange characters in
the name.
Why the text looks different on
other computers?
You have to remember that not every body has the same font
as you have. To ensure the font will be displayed properly
use standard font such Arial or Times New Roman . You can
use any other font, but then you have to include the ttf
file on the CD and use
InstallFont("<SrcDir>\myfont.ttf") command. Be aware
that generally many font's should not be distributed -
they are copyrighted. For more info about copyrights you
can try FontMagic. To ensure that the Text object will
appear the same on any systems you can just simple convert
it to bitmap: Select the text object then from Menu -
Object select Convert to Bitmap. This will create a bitmap
object and hide the original text (in case you want to
change something later).
Tip: If you don't need to show/hide text during the
runtime you can simply combine all the text objects with
the background to save space and memory. Menu Arrange -
Combine - Objects with background
No sound in Flash (Video, Binding, MCI, TTS,
external application or second instance of MMB
application)
MMB crashes on Win9x/ME on page with Flash/Video or audio
running over a 3rd party PlugIn.
Another sound problems & crashes on Win9x/ME
systems
Unfortunately, we found, that some systems (Win9x/ME) with older
or obsolete VXD sound drivers cannot play multiple sounds at a time or initialize
and use audio HW by multiple sources. In other words, on those systems
cannot be run for example WinAmp and Flash/Video file with audio track.
And the same problem you can get with Flash/Video/embedded application running
from MMB application. Some users also reprots crashes on WinME. All these
problems have one comon denominator...obsolete sound card drivers.
The only cure as we know (except
disabling FMOD audio library) is to reinstall older VXD type of
sound card drivers (often available on W9x/ME systems) with
the latest WDM drivers.
Go to
the sound card manufacturer's website, and download and
install the latest drivers from there. If you are not sure
about the WDM compatibility of their drivers, just ask
the manufacturer.
TIP: If the
drivers offered on the manufacturer's web site
are marked as Win98/ME/Win2k/WinXP compatible (or
packed in one file), then they are most probably WDM
compatible.
For SoundBlaster users could be useful this link:
http://us.creative.com/support/downloads/
If your sound card is an on-board one, then check the
driver CD that you got with PC. Or go to the motherboard
manufacturer's website and download the drivers from
there.
Also very good source of drivers (many of them are marked
as WDM compatible) can be found here:
http://www.driverguide.com/
If you are not sure about your sound card manufacturer or
driver type (VXD od WDM), then try the below steps:
Click on Start,
then on RUN, then
type DXDIAG and
click OK..
Then click the
Sound tab...
In ôDriverö section you can find the driver name/version
and in ôDeviceö section you can check the type of already
installed driver: VXD (older..the problematic one) or WDM
(new one). The VXD type of driver is the type, which cause
the mentioned problems with sound under some Win9x/ME
systems.
Reinstall your current drivers with WDM ones and the
sound problems will go away!
If you don't like to tell the users of your product to reinstall
their drivers, then there are also another two options:
1) Compile your project with
NoFMOD player, but this will completely
disable internal MMB audio playback, therefore AudioCommands and some other
Sound related commands will no longer work.
2) Use FMODConfig("3")
command at application startup. This command will temporarily disable FMOD
audio library, then you will able to play Sound from an external source
(Flash, Video, TTS, etc...). But this will also disable the internal MMB
audio playback. However, against the compiling your project with NoFMOD,
in this case you will able to turn the FMOD audio library back ON and play
the MMB internal audio.
Text object or Circle placed over Flash
(HTML, ListBox, Binding,...) have an ugly white rectangle around it (transparent
parts are not transparent)
This is a know limitation
of all windowed objects like an HTML, Flash, ListBox, Binding and some other.
Unfortunately, this limitation cannot be removed..at least not without significant
CPU and memory usage and potential MMB slowdown.
The Video object
doesn't create preview (still) image.
This is because the color depth
of the loaded video file is too low (most probably 8bpp or lower). Unfortunately,
creating preview image for video file like this is not currently supported.
Another cause of this issue can
be too low display color depth - 16bit (High Color) or lower. Just increase
color depth to 24 or 32 bit (True Color) and it will work as expected.
Slow loading of big/lengthy audio (mainly MP3) files
Incorrect time reported by some (VBR) audio files
This is because all streamed
audio files
(mp3, ogg, wma, asf) are loaded (by deafult) in a precise mode. In this
mode MMB always loads entire file to
get the correct total time of loaded file. This is useful mainly for VBR
encoded files, which can returns wrong time.
For speeding up the reading of
audio files you can turn this precise mode OFF. In a Designer you can turn it
OFF in "Tools>>Designer settings" menu
(uncheck "MPEG Accurate..." mode. For compiled apps you
can uncheck the same option in "File>>Compile" menu.
And finally, you can also turn this option ON/OFF in a runtime by FMODConfig
script function.
Unfortunately, if you turn this
option OFF, most of all VBR files will return incorrect total time. There
is no way how to avoid this (it's an FMOD audio library feature). You
have to carefully decide if you need fast loading of all (even big) audio
files or precise total time of all (mainly VBR) files.