Phoenix Wright: Case Maker - Recently Updated Pages

Main Page

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:19:50 CDT

Welcome to the Phoenix Wright: Case Maker Wiki! Check here for help or generaliness about the creator.

Make sure to check:
Commands and Actions
Databases

And last but not least, the Tutorials.

Other useful links:
Recently updated pages

Text-Mouth Syncing

Anonymous — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:47:31 CDT

Text-Mouth Syncing makes the selected character move his or her mouth with the speech bubbles.

Databases

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:14:33 CDT

Updated to version: 2.0

Databases:
ActionList Database
Character Database
Background Database

*****************************************

Anonymous — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 16:15:44 CST

THIS PAGE IS INCOMPLETE. HELP US IMPROVING IT!

Updated to version: 2.?

*INSERT CONTEXT HERE*

Releated links:
*INSERT LINKS HERE*

sprites

Anonymous — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:42:08 CDT

Updated to version: 2.?

*INSERT CONTEXT HERE*

Releated links:
*INSERT LINKS HERE*

yysssssss

Anonymous — Fri, 02 May 2008 14:37:24 CDT

Updated to version: 2.?

*INSERT CONTEXT HERE*

Releated links:
*INSERT LINKS HERE*

ActionList Database

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:18:27 CST

Updated to version: 2.0

New Action List: Makes a new ActionList with a name of your choice. It will appear blank.
Edit Current Name: Edits the current ActionList name to a new of your choice.
Combo Box: The list of ActionLists. Select one to edit it.

Double-click your current ActionList to add Commands and Actions.

Releated links:
Commands and Actions

make a case

Anonymous — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 08:24:29 CST

Making a case is simple. Click "Build exe" and it will run for about 10 seconds until it's done.

Commands and Actions

Anonymous — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:53:12 CDT

Updated to version: 2.?

New Background
Character Appearence
New Message
Play Sound/Music
WAIT
Special Effects
ActionLines

Questions

Anonymous — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 11:54:29 CDT

Updated to version: 2.?

Post youre questions here and get them answered by our staff.

Question: When I try to open up one of the tutorials, it won't run. What am I doing wrong?

Releated links:

New Background

jack741 — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 11:45:37 CDT

Updated to version: 2.0

The "New Background" action is actually quite simple. Select a background from the background database and click "OK!" to change the current background (or Speed Lines) to the one you have selected.
If no background appears you haven't loaded any into your database.

Releated links:
Commands and Actions
Background Database

Tutorials

Anonymous — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 09:08:30 CDT

CASE SCRIPT TUTORIALS
Tutorials included in the PW:CM version 2.0:
The First Turnabout
TUTORIAL - Conditions
TUTORIAL - Objections
TUTORIAL - Oldbag Gibberish
TUTORIAL - Phoenix Drive
TUTORIAL - Phoenix Zoom
TUTORIAL - Scenery Commands

Useful fan-made tutorials:
Courtroom Camera Movement - Tutorial by MechaBowser

TEXT TUTORIALS
How to add characters - Tutorial by MechaBowser
What are ActionLines? - Tutorial by MechaBowser

Getting Started

Anonymous — Tue, 08 May 2007 04:25:11 CDT

~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...~

Special Effects

DDRKhat — Wed, 02 May 2007 09:33:00 CDT

Text Appearences

Upon clicking it, such as "Objection!" or "Hold it!" it will insert that text appearance to your Actionlist
This will NOT play the noise (Objection! or Hold it! for example) you will have to do that with the playsound command

Shake Effect

Pick how long you wish for the Shaking to happen, a typical shake time is 10
Make sure "Add Shacking Effect" is ticked

Flash Speed

Pick how long you wish for the flash to happen, a typical flash speed is 9
You can perform "Fade" effects with flash speed. this will be explained lower down

Wait until effect ends

This is pretty self-explanatory, it will wait for the effect to finish before the script continues

"Fade" Effects
Black Fade

Flash with speed 3 (Fade-In, Black)
//Whatever you may want to do here.
Flash with speed 3 (Fade-Out, Black)

White Fade

Flash with speed 3 (Fade-In, White)
//Whatever you may want to do here.
Flash with speed 3 (Fade-Out, White)

Releated links:
Commands and Actions

Play Sound/Music

DDRKhat — Wed, 02 May 2007 09:22:23 CDT

1.Adding a sound effect

The sound has to be a WAV file located in your "Sounds" folder
The field is CaSe SeNsEtIvE (So if your soundfile is OmG.wav then you have to put in "OmG"

2.Adding/Changing Music

The music file must be a OGG file in your "Sounds" folder

The field is CaSe SeNsEtIvE (So if your soundfile is OmG.wav then you have to put in "OmG"

Once you've done that. click OK!

Releated links:
Commands and Actions

What are ActionLines? - Tutorial by MechaBowser

MechaBowser — Wed, 02 May 2007 03:58:11 CDT

What are ActionLines?

ActionLines work just like the "script" or timeline for your case. An example would be:
New background "Courtroom"
New character "Wright"

This would first make the background "courtroom" appear, and then make the character "Wright" appear. Sounds easy huh.
Without ActionLines there would be no game at all because basically, the ActionLines IS the game.

What are ActionLists?
ActionLists are basically the list holding the ActionLines. ActionLists doesn't interact with eachother unless it is being jumped to.
You can have multiple ActionLists and easily switch back and forth between them. You can even rename them after your choice.

How to add characters - Tutorial by MechaBowser

MechaBowser — Tue, 01 May 2007 17:34:37 CDT

We're starting from the bottom. At first I make my new case. Wooh.

Now I go into the Character Database and make up my character.

There we go. All the infos added.
But wait, what's this?? Can't find the sprite? Ofcourse not! We didn't add it to the database! Silly us.
Now we click create and next is the folder-work.

Now we go into the "Projects" folder. This folder has all your cases in it.

Hey look! It's our case! We go in here.

We want to edit characters. We go into that folder, ayup.

Now here comes the "tricky?" part. Remember that we made the Display Name "Manella"? This means we need to make a folder called "Manella".

In here we place our .gif files. This, also, needs to be called "Manella". The animations name work like this:
*DISPLAY NAME (Manella)* + Expression + ("_T") + ".gif"
Our default Manella sprite would then be named:
"Manella" + (no expression) + (not talking) + ".gif" aka "Manella.gif".

Now we want his talking pose. We name this the same as the non-talking except we add "_T" after it.

Let's see how it looks in the maker.

Oh my! It's working!

Tadaa! Hope it helped.

Dangerous Updates

MechaBowser — Tue, 01 May 2007 10:17:56 CDT

Dangerous Updates are updates which can affect your case in a way that may eventually make it unplayable or confusing.
Look for the update you updated to, to know how to fix this dangerous update.

Update Notes

Update Notes

MechaBowser — Tue, 01 May 2007 10:15:39 CDT

There is no updates for the PW:CM at the moment.

Saving

MechaBowser — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:52:13 CDT

Updated to version: 2.?

Saving is a new feature in the Case Maker history. Saving is done by pressing ESC while playing. But to enable the ability of saving, you must toggle YES in the preferences.

Note that when making changes to your case, and then loading with an old save file, it might screw up the game. Therefore it's suggested that you note the player of this.

NOTE THAT loading is currently NOT a feature. Stay tuned because it is due to change.

Releated links:
Preferences