Storyline Project Issues
May 09, 2023
By
Daniel Clark
I am creating, what I would consider to be a rather complex "calculator" that could be used to aid in merchandising strategies. Originally, I didn't have any issues, but as I have neared completion the project moves rather slowly and will lock up and crash from time to time. I am curious if the issue could be related to the number of variables that I have or if I would have better luck moving some of the "formulas" to a javascript function rather than having each step in the formula written out line by line. Any advice on building more complicated "calculators" would be greatly appreciated.
7 Replies
Daniel, it's unlikely that the number of variables or triggers is causing the problem (unless you have thousands of one or the other).
Do you happen to have a lot of text entry or numeric entry input boxes on a single slide? If so, be sure you have the latest (April 18th) version of Storyline installed. The latest released fixed a long-standing issue with severe lag when multiple input fields were used on a slide. You can see the release notes here:
https://articulate.com/support/article/Articulate-Storyline-360-Version-History
I looked and it appears that I do have the most up to date version of Storyline 360.
Are there other issues that are known to cause issues. The problem becomes more apparent when I am testing and adjust one variable too quickly after I adjusted the previous variable. In particular, I created a drop down menu using different layers and references, and if I choose them too quickly it freezes and crashes.
Not that I'm aware of. If you're permitted to do so, you can post that portion of your project here for community members to help troubleshoot. Otherwise, I recommend opening a case with Articulate Support.
Like I said, it will work, but if you choose an option on the top grey box and then click the bottom one rather quickly, it will freeze. The bottom grey box also takes a little longer than I would expect as well.
I'll take a look at your file later today, Daniel, and will let you know if I see anything obvious that's causing the issue.
I think your approach needs to be re-architected. Your ToggleYield variable is being toggled whenever quite a number of variables change, and when ToggleYield changes, it goes through a long list of computation triggers which in turn are changing the many variables that are toggling ToggleYield.
Storyline is able to eventually go back and forth and work through the long list of computation triggers but the effort is one of "do this, now do that, oops...go back and do this again..." and so on; thus, it appears Storyline has froze up but in fact it's just having to do all this redundant work so it's taking a very, very long time.
It might be better to put your ToggleYield computation set on a layer and change the setting of that layer to pause the base layer while all that works through, and then hide the ToggleYield layer to return to the base layer.
Thanks Steve.
I will give this a try. I need the calculator to "refresh" anytime any of the variables that are used in the formula change automatically. That was the best way I could think of to make that happen. To your point, perhaps pausing or other work arounds could work better.