Vanishing "normal" state

Dec 27, 2013

I've created a slide with a screen with a character looking forward.  It is the normal state for the character.  There are three thought bubbles over her head and on hover, the state changes to the character looking up to the hovered bubble.  When the cursor leaves the bubble, the state returns to normal.  When the user clicks on a bubble it triggers a layer change.  It is when the timeline ends on each layer and the presentation returns to the base layer that the problem begins...the character's normal state disappears. When I hover over any of the bubbles, the character appears in the appropriate state but on leaving the hover, the character evaporates.  What's going on?  Please help before I throw myself from my first floor window!

9 Replies
Michael Hinze

Eric, without seeing your file it's difficult to guess what the issue may be. I tried to recreate your scenario, but couldn't reproduce the problem; it works as expected in my file. Have a look at the attached file and compare the baselayer and slidelayer settings to your file. Maybe this helps you find the problem.

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Eric,

Thanks for sharing your video here, and as Michael mentioned without seeing your file it may be difficult to determine exactly what's happening.

Some good reminders to start with, include:

  • Work on your local drive (your C: drive).Working on a network drive or a USB drive can cause erratic behavior, includingfile corruption, loss of audio, and other unexpected behavior. 
  • You should also make sure the directory pathto your project files and your published output is less than 260 characters(for example C:\Articulate).
  • Avoid using special characters, accents orsymbols in your file names.
  • Set your DPI to 96

If you'd like to share your .story file here with us, we'd be happy to take a look. If you'd prefer to share privately you can also send it along here. 

Michael Hinze

Eric Vogel said:

Thanks for the try Michael but no go.  The only thing different about your settings is that I need to hide the base layer while the other layers play through.  I've attached a video.  Are you able to spot anything?


Eric, in that case I would try adding a trigger to each bubble that when clicked, changes the character back to Normal. Make sure you place these triggers BEFORE the triggers that show the associated layer.

Eric Vogel

Hi all,

Since my last post, I deleted the triggers related to the state changes and then added them back in.  No change.  This particular .story file is saved on my desktop though it was indeed copied over from a file that was originally saved on a network server.  If there was anything funky about the original, those problems may have been copied over to the new file.  Maybe? 

Thanks for your help with this,

Eric

Ashley Terwilliger-Pollard

Hi Eric, 

Thanks for sharing your file here. Interestingly enough, the character did disappear for me during the first preview, but not the second time I previewed it. So it seems likely that there could have been some file corruption from it being on a network drive originally. I imported it into a new Storyline project to see if I could get the behavior to occur again, and I have tested it a few times and the character does not disappear - this may help you out. 

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