Scripting Languages

DirectMusic Producer supports any ActiveX scripting language for creating scripts, but the two most commonly used languages are Visual Basic Scripting Edition and AudioVBScript. AudioVBScript is a DirectMusic-optimized language, specially geared toward music content playback and occupying a very small memory footprint. Alternatively, a composer could use the full Visual Basic Scripting Edition language ("VBScript" for short). While this language occupies more memory and potentially could take more processing power, it is a fully featured language, providing added flexibility and additional features, such as string concatenation (the ability to merge several pieces of text for display or script usage). Generally, start with AudioVBScript and move up to VBScript if you find that you need additional power. All scripts written in AudioVBScript will work in VBScript, but the opposite is not necessarily true. Of course, don't forget that the programmer can also step in for more complex scripting usage to perform some operations in lower-level DirectMusic code.

The language that a specific script uses can be selected from that script's properties page.

Figure 7-5: The Script Properties window.

A full list of differences between the two languages can be found in the DirectMusic Producer help documentation under the topic AudioVBScript Limitations.