Global Objects Across Slides

Jul 09, 2012

Payal Tandon
By Payal Tandon

Hi Storyline Experts,

I don't know if there is any entity known as GLOBAL OBJECTS but I would like to discuss this a bit here.  Here is what I want to do (simplified version of my otherwise complex course structure).

I have 3 different slides.  And all three slides actually have 3 buttons.  Buttons 1, 2, 3.  So technically when I am on slide 1, button 1 should be highlighted.  When I am on slide 2, button 2 should be highlighted.  When I am on slide 3, button 3 should be highlighted.  Now it sounds simple.  I can set the states of the buttons and go ahead with it.  But the issue here is that each slide contains its own instance of Button 1.  So I actually have 3 different Button 1. 

So how can I control the state of these 3 instances of button 1 across the 3 different slides.  One solution that comes to mind is by using variables.  And I am going to try that right after I submit this question.  Is there some other solution?  Note that I cannot use slide layers since my content varies quite significantly across the slides. 

I would really look forward to your responses here.

Thanks,

Payal

12 Replies
Payal Tandon
almost 12 years ago07/09/12 at 1:16 pm (UTC)

That is simply amazing Jeanette...Thanks so much to you and David for doing this so beautifully...I am going to try both the approaches now.  In fact doing the variable approach but maintaining only 1 variable is brilliant.  Now that I saw this approach, it seems so simple, but definitely taking up just 1 variable did not cross my mind.    I love the slide master approach as well.  In fact through that tutorial I could understand the utility of scenes with respect to slide navigation in the published output. 

Cannot thank you guys enough!!

Payal Tandon
almost 12 years ago07/16/12 at 5:47 pm (UTC)

Ok so I was able to create my templates.  My templates include all the linkages and the triggers and the variables.  But now when I insert slides based on this template, the triggers to connect to specific slides and the variables and hence the triggers do not get copied over.  What am I missing?  Please help.  Would it help to provide the template that I created?

Payal Tandon
almost 12 years ago07/17/12 at 5:48 am (UTC)

Hi Jeanette,

Here you go...I have attached the storytemplate file as well as the story file in which I inserted the template.  Here is the recording of how I insert the template based slides.  I am not sure where I am going wrong.  But when I created the template, I was so excited and I thought I had a major breakthrough in learning storyline, so much so that at that point I thought of making this template a bit more general to share it it with the community.  But first I have to get it to work...:(

Thanks alot for your help Jeanette.

Regards,

Payal

Jeanette Brooks
almost 12 years ago07/17/12 at 7:12 am (UTC)

Hi Payal - thanks for including the file. I think the challenge is that Storyline templates are really designed to allow you to leverage the content from specific slides or scenes. Since variables aren't really associated with a particular slide or scene (but are instead used throughout the project), they don't travel with the slides when you insert slides/scenes from a template. This feels a little confusing to me, so I'll submit it to the dev team for review, and also to be sure that there's not something I'm missing. In the meantime, here's a different approach to re-using the content from your file, in a way that will help you keep the variables & triggers intact.

Payal Tandon
almost 12 years ago07/17/12 at 7:22 am (UTC)

Thanks alot Jeanette.  This definitely helps.    In fact the additional step of removing the slides that I do not need is not an issue for me since I need all those slides from the template.  So this works perfect.  But how would I do this if I want two or three instances of all those slides in my story file.  Basically the template includes slides associated with 1 example.  Now my course file contains 3 such examples.  So I would need 3 instances of these. 

One thing that comes to my mind is that I should create a story file with 3 examples and then for each course file I should simply do a save as as you suggested. 

Is this the cleanest approach?

But now I have a bigger question, if we cannot transfer variables and triggers from template to story file, then we essentially cannot use templates for setting up such intricate navigation and trigger.  May be I am missing something here. 

As always thanks alot for all your help...

Payal Tandon
almost 12 years ago07/18/12 at 9:03 am (UTC)

I can actually use the same "step" variable for the duplicate scenes as well.  So I will go ahead with the alternate approach that you suggested - in which I "save as" the file with all the triggers and variables.  I will need to create duplicates though. 

In your earlier post you had mentioned that you have asked your dev team as well about this.  Can you confirm if the dev team has confirmed the conclusion - that triggers and variables do not get transferred over through the template.

Thanks alot Jeanette.

Regards,

Payal

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