How to Create Your Own Demos using Time Travel

How to Create Your Own Demos using Time Travel

Advanced users:

After running ToonTalk with time travel enabled, you'll find a file named time_travel.dmo in your ToonTalk user directory (typically a directory with your name that is a subdirectory of ToonTalk that is a subdirectory of My Documents). Copy and rename it but be sure to keep the DMO file extension. This file can be distributed to anyone who has the same version of ToonTalk installed. It can be linked to from a web page. When clicked upon this file will replay the time travel log. The time travel VCR-like controls will appear when you move the mouse.

A DMO file is internally a zip archive that contains several lognnnnn.dmo files (one for each time travel segment) and a 0.xml file that contains some extra information. You can use any of the common zip utilities to add subtitles, text-to-speech, or narration to a time travel archive by unzipping the DMO file and adding your files. You may find it is easiest to temporarily rename the file to have a ZIP file extension while making any of the following enhancements to your demo.

Adding subtitles to your demos.

When ToonTalk starts running a time travel demo named X it looks for a file named X.ust. ("ust" is the default extension name for American English subtitles - in general the extension is the two-letter country code followed by 't'. British English is "ukt".) You can override the default for your computer by providing an "SubtitlesSuffix" entry in the "FileExtensions" section of the ToonTalk.ini file in your Windows directory. A subtitle file is made of entries separated by a blank line. Each entry has the time in milliseconds since the beginning of the demo followed by the text of the subtitle. It is recommended that any lines of text more than 60 characters be broken. The "demos" subdirectory of your ToonTalk installation has many sample subtitle files. One way to obtain the millisecond timings is to press F9 while the demo is playing back. This will record the time in your <user name>.txt log file in the "users" subdirectory.

One you have your UST file (or UKT, SET, PTT, JPT, ...) you should add it to the DMO file (it is a zip archive).

Adding narration to your demos.

The narration needs to be as either a single large WAVE file or several smaller files. WAVE files are the Microsoft Windows standard audio file and they usually have the WAV extension. Note that currently the WAVE file cannot be compressed as an MP3 or Windows Media file.

A single WAVE file will typically be larger than several smaller WAVE files since there is no playback of quiet periods. Also very large WAVE files may cause some performance problems. Currently ToonTalk can only playback a WAVE file from the beginning so if during playback one uses the VCR controls to jump into the middle of a narration you won't hear it. Until ToonTalk is enhanced to play the sound files from any starting location, the best alternative is to break your file into smaller pieces.

You specify when you want a wave file to begin playback during a demo by adding to your subtitle file an XML fragment such as:

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SoundFile>UK\s01.wav</SoundFile>

This indicates that 1.412 seconds into the demo that ToonTalk should begin to play the sound file in the DMO archive named UK\s01.wav. If you anticipate making different language versions of your demo we recommend you use a folder name for each version. Alternatively you can keep all the files at the top level of the zip archive and give them names like UK_s01.wav. If you only want to have narration without subtitles then the above can be the entire contents of your subtitles file.

If you wish to have narration generated by the same text-to-speech engine that Marty uses, you can add an entry such as

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<TextToSpeech>Welcome to my demo.</TextToSpeech>

An Example:

Here is the beginning of the intro_v2.ust in the intro_v2.dmo used in ToonTalk 3:

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SoundFile>US\s01.wav</SoundFile>

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Hello! Welcome to ToonTalk.
I'm Pat and I'll be happy to show you around.

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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<SoundFile>US\s02.wav</SoundFile>

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If I hold down the right mouse button,
we fly up.

Tips:

Avoid using keyboard accelerators for tools (e.g. 'e' to make Dusty erase things). These accelerators differ from language to language so if you use them your demos probably won't work in a different language version of ToonTalk.
If you are creating a demo on a fast computer and expect the demo to be run on slower machines then it is recommended that you add -y 50 (or a similar number) to the command line while recording to slow down your machine. We also recommend if you are making a demo that will run on slower computers to switch to a lower screen resolution before recording it (e.g. 800x600).
If your demo includes your own sounds or pictures then enable IncludeMediaInTimeTravelArchives so that the media files are included in the DMO file.
If your demo works only in a particular version of ToonTalk then if you add the ToonTalk executable (e.g. TT345.exe) to the DMO file ToonTalk will use this version when replaying the demo. Note that this will not work if the EXE is a later version than was installed and other files are needed to run this version.
If you have a script (e.g. the subtitles) before recording the time travel session you can see the subtitles while recording. To do so, place a copy of the script in the Demos subdirectory of the ToonTalk installation and name it time_travel.ust (or UKT etc.). Record a few seconds and exit ToonTalk. Then when you come back you'll see the subtitles. To enable this feature add SubtitlesAndNarrationEvenWithoutDemo=1 to the Switches section of toontalk.ini.
If your demo includes Marty speaking then don't have Marty use subtitles since then they can't be added to the demo as well. The talk balloon is a good alternative (with or without text-to-speech).
You can create a video or animation of a demo by creating series of screen snapshots.

Warning: This documentation applies to version 3 (internal release 3.45 or Beta 42 or later). Older versions can make demos without time travel.