What's with the entrance animation options for "fade"??

Hey, I'm assuming I'm doing something terribly wrong, but I wanted to create a visual animation on top of a scrolling effect- something along the lines of this- https://community.articulate.com/download/storyline-2-seamless-scrolling-effect

but the specific animation I was hoping to create was to have the dotted line fade in from left to right, so it appears as if the dots were appearing sequentially rather than all at once. I'm certain that I can make the effect, the issue is one of timing/convenience. Its not worth the trouble if I have to make a million individual dots to trigger sequentially, and the option that I expected to be able to make it work, doesn't do that at all. What I'm talking about are the "effect options" for fade. There are options for all the directions, but the animation that happens is basically a combination of the "fade" and "fly in" instead of what I was hoping for, which was a direction of the fade itself- I want to fade in from left to right as opposed to the whole thing fading in at the same time.

On a side note- anyone have any good examples of nifty ways to use specific animation effects like that fade from the left? I know the basics, but I'm looking at that animation, and I can't possibly envision a situation where an effect like that would actually be desirable, and it certainly doesn't seem as useful/desirable as the option I was hoping it actually was... Any examples where various obtuse animation effects are used purposefully but sparingly and effectively would be interesting to see.