Editing scripts in a standalone

[Scott Rossi]

Recently, "Shari"  wrote:

> I just realized that the inability to edit scripts in a standalone
> blows the entire marketing strategy of the project I'm working on.
> 
> This program is going to have several plug ins, or additions to it,
> over a long period of time.  Additions that will be sold separately
> from the program.
> 
> Rather than make someone download a brand new program every time he
> wants to add a module, I had planned to set these additions up as
> updates, that would patch into the program and make whatever changes
> were needed, add images, sounds, and change the scripts etc.
> ...
>
> To expect someone to download the entire program every time you
> release a module they want, is bad programming.  That's not how it's
> done.
>
> ...
>
> Does anyone have any specific ideas on how to deal with this?  It's a
> MAJOR issue for this project.  I was relying on the ability to update
> the program using the modules.  This was a long term marketing
> strategy.

Yes - you separate your stacks from the standalone.  The standalone
essentially becomes the engine that drives the stacks, which become data
files.  Then you can update/add stacks as needed without forcing the user to
download the engine for each update.

We developed a marketing/promotional app that works this way.  The package
consists of content files (text files and images), the app's UI/scripts (an
MC stack) and an engine (MC standalone) that runs it all.  To update the
package, we create a new UI stack if necessary which is only 200K and add
new content files (a few K here and there); the engine doesn't need to be
updated until MC Corp comes out with major feature updates.

Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, Multimedia & Design
-----
E: scott at tactilemedia.com
W: http://www.tactilemedia.com