~A guide for the easily perplexed~
version 0.1 by KServo

This is a guide to setting up and writing a very short and basic program using "Phoenix Wright: Case Maker". As you'll see, setting up a case can be quite involved and for a simple case it may seem like a lot of effort, but don't be disheartened - when you move onto more complicated things, and as you become more familiar with the software, setup time decreases significantly.

The first step, most obviously, is to get a copy of PW:CM. If you don't have one yet, this thread on the Court Records Forums will have the latest version. Now, open it up by double-clicking on 'Phoenix Wright Case Maker.exe'. It will look like this:



Notice that there are several cases that come preloaded; they will be good dissection material when you move onto more complicated things. For now, however, we want to create a case from scratch. Type a nice name into the text box at the bottom of the window (such as 'My First Case!') and click "Create new case":



This window will pop up. There isn't anything much for us to do here right now - we need to get some characters, backgrounds, music or sound effects before our work can begin. Fire up Windows Explorer and look for the directory in which you placed all the PWCM program files, then double-click the 'DATABASE' folder:



We need a number of things from these folders, so stick a copy of 'em on your desktop or somewhere else that's safe for the time being. Here's the list:
Backgrounds --> "Court Room Left.png" and "Court Room LeftFRONT.png"
Characters --> Wright --> "Wright.gif" and "Wright_T.gif"
Sounds --> "Talking.wav"






Now go back to the main program folder and double-click 'Projects'. This is where the files for each case you create are stored. Double-click on 'My First Case!'. Notice how similar the contents of this folder are to the 'DATABASE' folder? There's an extra folder for scenery, but don't mind that for the time being. Take those files that we harvested from the database and place them in the correct folders here.

Switch back to the program and select Database --> Characters. A window will come up listing the current characters in the database. This is currently blank because, uhm, we haven't added any yet. This, of course, will all change very soon... :D

Fill in Phoenix's details as on the right (note: I've put his age at 24 as I'm working in the AA timeline, your mileage may vary). The Character Name is fairly obvious. Display Name is the text that's shown above a character's ingame speech, and it's also the folder for which the program will search inside the 'Characters' folder to find all the relevant animation files. Oh... whoops. We didn't put Phoenix's animations into their own folder, so it would probably be best to do that now. All that needs to be done is to go to the 'Characters' folder, creating a new folder named 'Wright' and placing the two character animations into it.





[Remaining part of article is work-in-progress, pictures to come soon.]
If that's done correctly, you'll see that the non-talking version of the Wright sprite is displayed in the window. Once all the details are done to your liking, click 'Create'. Phoenix is now a recognised character in the database! *fanfare, confetti, etc.* Exit the window (by clicking on the 'X' at the top-right) to return to the main screen once more.

Next thing to set up are the backgrounds (yes, yes, we'll get around to making him talk soon, I promise). Enter the backgrounds database... looking pretty empty here, too. To add backgrounds, type in the filename of the image without the file extension (.png) and click [Add/Create/can'trememberwhatitis]. Note three very important things here: all backgrounds are .png, they're nontransparent (why would you want them to be transparent anyway?) and you can only have one background at a time. Well, that's not technically true, since if you stick a FRONT at the end of a filename (ex: 'Court Room Left.png' and 'Court Room LeftFRONT.png') and try to display 'Court Room Left.png' in your game, both images are displayed, one in front of the other. Guess which one's in front? You might find some use for this if you wish to create your own backgrounds...
Otherwise, trying to call up two backgrounds at once will mean that only the latter one is displayed, so it's a bit silly and not really worth doing.

Now that you've got your backgrounds database prepared, we can begin creating the animation!

~To be continued... once again...~