Effect descriptions in English and other languages often employ the terms And, + and & to mean the same thing, as in “Red And Blue Peony” and “Red & Blue Peony” and “Red + Blue Peony”. Making matters more complicated, in some languages With means the the same thing as And, as in “Red Peony And Tail” in comparison to “Red Peony With Tail”. In VDL, however, these terms have different meanings, making it possible to interpret complex effect descriptions that use multiple colors and multiple effects unambiguously.   Table 1 – Conjunctions that sound alike, but are different in VDL Term Meaning Example And Not a VDL term + Combines shots of a cake, candle or chain Red Comet + Gold Comet Cake & Combines colors that are part of the same multi-color effect Red & Blue Peony With Combines an effect with a mine, petal, tail, or other stars mixed in Gold Comet With Red Mine   The first question people ask is: Why is And not a VDL term? The second question they ask is: If effect descriptions in my inventory use the term And anyway, what happens? Ironically, the reason And is not in VDL is precisely to make sure the right thing happens if you use the term in your inventory. VDL is designed to encompass existing effect inventories, to make their meanings explicit, and to enable people to adjust their descriptions when necessary to get the exact meaning they want. The problem with And is that it is used pervasively in existing effect inventories, with different meanings. Thus, if VDL chose any specific meaning for And, that meaning would be the wrong interpretation for a lot of effects in people’s inventories. By leaving And out of VDL, the designers of VDL sought to give more latitude to software programs that interpret effect descriptions to create simulations automatically. If And had a defined meaning in VDL, then software programs would be forced to create simulations according to that specific meaning (even if it is obviously wrong). If And is not part of VDL, then software programs are free to determine the best interpretation for it based on the other terms in the effect description. Software programs can usually guess right, which is a better outcome than necessarily being wrong for one set of effects or another. So, if your effect descriptions use the word And, that’s probably just fine. Software programs will interpret And as + or & or With, as smartly as possible. If you don’t like the result, then change the word And to one of the other three, which all have defined meanings. The two symbols + and & are easy to differentiate.  The + symbol combines effect descriptions for shots of a cake, candle, or chain in circumstances in which the item’s shots are not all the same.  Here are some examples, 20 Shot Red Peony + Blue Peony Cake Red + White + Blue Chain Of 6 8 Shot Red Comet + Blue Comet Roman Candle All three of these examples have multiple shots that are not all the same.  The cake in the first example has two kinds of shots: Red Peony, and Blue Peony.  This cake description doesn’t specify how many of the 20 shots are red peonies versus how many are blue, nor does it specify the firing order, but it does make clear: The cake shots are one color or the other.  (See articles on cake effect descriptions for instructions to specify the firing order, timing, etc., in effect descriptions). The ampersand symbol & in VDL combines the colors of a multi-color effect.  Compare the chain example above with this chain: Red & White & Blue Chain Of 6 Can you see the difference?  In this effect description that uses ampersands, the chain has six identical shells, each one of them a multi-color shell with stars of three colors. The term With in VDL combines an effect with an additional mine, petal, tail, or other stars mixed in, as in these examples: Gold Comet With Blue Mine Gold Palm With Red Ring Gold Kamuro With Tail Gold Chrysanthemum With Blue If the With-phrase includes the term Mine or Bouquet, then it adds a mine to the original effect, usually representing a shot consisting of lose mine stars underneath one or more shells or bombettes that are lifted together. If the With-phrase includes a term that defines a flower or shape (e.g., Palm, Ring, etc.), then the phrase adds a petal to the original effect. If the With-phrase just describes characteristics of a star, then it indicates the original effect includes stars of that description, mixed in with the other stars.

For aerial shells, the prefire time defines the lift time of the shell if the prefire >= 0.5.  The prefire of cakes applies to the first shot of the cake (details here).   If prefire is < 0.5, then it defines the “delay before simulation,” making the launches occur a fraction of a second later than the ignition time.   Cakes of comets or other ground effects will generally have a prefire < 0.5, but cakes of shells will generally have a prefire equal to the lift time of the first shell.  Since changing the prefire of a cake of aerial shells to any value >= 0.5 changes the lift time of its first effect, some people ask, “How can I create a cake of aerial shells with a prefire that I specify without affecting the lift times?”.   Would prefire < 0.5 work? (EASIEST ANSWER) Prefire values < 0.5 do not affect the lift time of the shell, so if you want to change the prefire to a small value, you don’t need to worry.  A prefire < 0.5 results in “normal” lift times and a firing pattern for the cake that begins after a small delay (the prefire) from when the cake is ignited.   Add LFT to fix the lift time after setting prefire >= 0.5 (GOOD ANSWER) Prefire values >= 0.5 define the lift time of the first shell, but if that’s not what you want you can explicitly specify the lift time of the first shell in the cake or any other shell in the cake (or any shell, actually) by adding LFT to the cake’s VDL, as in, 1" 2.0s 10 Shot 1.75 PFT FNR Cake Blue Peony 1.50 LFT Since the prefire of this cake > 0.5, it would specify the lift time of the first effect in the cake (the Blue Peony), but that effect includes the LFT term to specify its lift time explicitly, which takes precedence.  So in this example, the prefire does not affect the simulation at all.  So why would you care about the prefire?   Notwithstanding the simulation, the prefire determines the delay between the firing system’s ignition time and the “effect time” that the choreographer synchronizes to the music, represented by the little blip on the timeline bar.  In this example, the choreographer might want to synchronize to a time point a little after the break of the first shell, giving the stars a chance to blossom.  By setting the prefire time to 0.25 seconds after the actual lift delay of the shell, the choreographer gives his shells more time to develop.   Would the “Delay Default” field work instead? (SOMETIMES THE RIGHT ANSWER) If your reason for setting the prefire to a value that does not correspond to the shell’s lift time is that you have a long fuse in front of the device, like for example a Pyro-Clock fuse or a Visco fuse on a cake, then the “Delay Default” field in Finale 3D may be better suited to your purpose than “Prefire“. The Delay Default field in Finale 3D is an external delay between the ignition of the e-match and the ignition of the effect.  The column is normally hidden in the effects window and the script, so click the blue gear menu in the upper right of those windows to unhide it.  In the effects window, the column is called “Delay Default” whereas in the script window it is called “Delay” (the internal column name in the script window is “externalDelay”).  The reason it is called “Delay Default” in the effects view is that when you insert an effect the “Delay Default” is copied by value into the script’s “Delay” field.  Once it is copied into the script, you can edit the Delay in the script on a row-by-row basis, as you might need to do if you were adjusting the length of the delay fuses on an item by item basis in the physical world.  Thus the “Delay” in the script can be different for different occurrences of the same effect.  

NOTE: the easiest way to create a cake in Finale 3D is to lay out effects on the timeline, then select them, and then do the menu item, “Effects > Create cake from selected items…”, which will present a dialog showing the VDL that represents the cake.  The function automatically figures out the rows and firing patterns of the cake based on the spacing of the effects on the timeline (i.e., the delays between them) and their angles.  You can look at the VDL to understand the syntax. Like all VDL descriptions, cake descriptions can specify a height and duration, as you can see are 100 meters and 10 seconds in the example, 50mm 10s 100 Shot 100m Fan Cake (a) Gold Tail + (b) Red Mine 10 Rows Row 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (ababababab) For cakes, the duration is the duration of the cake itself (first ignition to last break, see Cake duration details), not the duration of the effects in the cake.  So you may be wondering how you can specify the durations of the individual effects within the cake.  The VDL term “DUR” is the answer.  If you want to specify the duration of the red stars to be 2.3 seconds in the above example, you can use the VDL, 50mm 10s 100 Shot 100m Fan Cake (a) Gold Tail + (b) 2.3 DUR Red Mine 10 Rows Row 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (ababababab) Unlike the duration specified at the beginning of the effect description (10s), the DUR terms specify the durations of the effects used within the cake.  If a cake contains various effect descriptions separated by plus signs (+), each effect description can contain a DUR expression, which applies only to that specific effect within the cake. A similar approach satisfies the need to specify heights of the individual effects in the cake, which is particularly important for cakes that combine multiple kinds of effects that have vastly different heights, like mines and comets.  Figure 1 shows a picture of a fan cake with mines and comets without any individual height specifications.  The height of the cake, 100m, applies to everything within the cake, which is too high for the mines.   Figure 1 – A cake VDL that doesn’t specify individual effect heights has the same height for everything.   The “HTM” term specifies the “height in meters” of an individual effect.  Similar to the DUR term, the cake VDL can contain an HTM specification for each effect description, separated by the plus signs. 50mm 10s 100 Shot 100m Fan Cake (a) Gold Tail + (b) 25 HTM Red Mine 10 Rows Row 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (ababababab) This cake VDL looks a lot more accurate, as you can see in Figure 2.   Figure 2 – The HTM (“height in meters”) term in VDL specifies individual effect heights.   The fan angle of the cake is also controllable, using the term “Degrees” at the beginning of the cake description, as in, 50mm 10s 100 Shot 100m 130 Degrees Fan Cake (a) Gold Tail + (b) Red Mine 10 Rows Row 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 (ababababab) The fan angle applies to any rows in the fake that have angles.

The VDL language supports whatever degree of detail you want to include in your cake descriptions.  Descriptions can be generic, like, 49 Shot Red Pearl Z-Shape Cake or more specific, like, 49 Shot 5s (a) Red Pearl + (b) Blue Pearl Cake Z-Shape, 7 Rows, Row 1,3,5 (aaaaaaa), Row 2,4,6 (bbbbbbb), Row 7 (1.2/abababa/FNT) If you want to specify the firing pattern for each row of a cake, then your VDL cake description will look more like the specific example, above, and it will contain row descriptions for every row in the cake. In this example, rows 1, 3, and 5 have a simple row description, specifying seven shots of effect (a), the Red Pearl. Rows 2, 4, and 6 are similar for effect (b). But row 7 includes more specifications. The three letter “FNT” at the end of the row 7 specifications is the “Firing Pattern Keyword”, which specifies the angles of the shots in the row, and whether there are delays between the shots, and which end of the row is ignited to shoot first. In this specific example, the term “Z-Shape” in the body of the cake description defines the default firing pattern for the cake as a whole.  Z-Shape declares the rows will fan shots from left to right and back, alternating with each row.  Since the firing descriptions for rows 1-6 do not specify any changes to that default firing pattern, the Z-Shape firing patterns will apply to rows 1-6.  But row 7 does specify a change, with the firing pattern keyword, FNT.  The term “FNT” stands for Fan-together.  This last row of the cake is thus an all-at-once fan of seven shots of alternating colors based on the letters (a) and (b). If a cake description doesn’t include any firing patterns in the body of the description, then the default firing pattern for every row will be the Up-Sequence firing pattern, abbreviated “STR“, which means all the tubes are aiming straight up (the “ST” for straight up) and they are fired in left to right order in the row (the “R” for left to right order). A similar firing pattern is Up-Reverse, abbreviated “STL“, which is the same except fired in the reverse order, right to left.   The left-to-right or right-to-left order distinction matters when the row contains multiple kinds of effects (the a’s and b’s, for example) in a non-symmetric pattern. A third straight up example is Up-Together (“STT“) which is all tubes firing at the same time.  Two other common fan firing patterns are “FNR“, and “FNL“, for Fan-Right, and Fan-Left.  The full list of firing patterns is defined in Table 1.   Table 1 – Firing pattern keywords Firing pattern keywords Term Pattern Timing Description Ignited from which end Also called STR ||| Sequential Up-Sequence Left STW STL ||| Sequential Up-Reverse Right STT ||| All-At-Once Up-Together Undefined ALR \\\ Sequential Left-Sequence Left AGW (and also see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) ALL \\\ Sequential Left-Reverse Right ALT \\\ All-At-Once Left-Together Undefined AGT ARR /// Sequential Right-Reverse Left ARL /// Sequential Right-Sequence Right ART /// All-At-Once Right-Together Undefined FNR \|/ Sequential Fan-Right Left FNW (and also see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) FNL \|/ Sequential Fan-Left Right (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) FNT \|/ All-At-Once Fan Undefined ATF (and also see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) BLR \| Sequential Stand-Right Left BKW (and also see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) BLL \| Sequential Fall-Left Right (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) BLT \| All-At-Once Left-Bookend Undefined BKT (and also see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) BRR |/ Sequential Fall-Right Left (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) BRL |/ Sequential Stand-left Right (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) BRT |/ All-At-Once Right-Bookend Undefined CTO \|/ Sequential Center-Out Center CRN (and also see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) OTC \|/ Sequential Outside-In Left And Right (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) TRI \|/ All-At-Once W-Shape * Undefined (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) TRX \|/ All-At-Once W-Shape * Undefined TRS \|/ Sequence-Of-Ws W-Shape * Right End Of Left Tubes, And Left End Of Center Tubes, And Left End Of Right Tubes (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions) VST \/ All-At-Once V-Shape Undefined VSS \/ Sequence-Of-Pairs V-Shape Center (see Table 2 of Cake descriptions)   * TRX is the same as TRI except when the number of tubes in a row is not divisible by 3: TRI adds the remainder as straight tubes; TRX adds the remainder as angle tubes. For example, TRI of 11 tube rows has the pattern 3-5-3, whereas TRX has the pattern 4-3-4. TRS defines a sequence N / 3 Ws, for N = the number of tubes in the row.  If N / 3 has remainder 1, then the extra tube is the left-most center tube; and it is shot along with the tube immediately to its right and the right-most left tube and the left-most right tube, i.e., the first W having 4 tubes shooting simultaneously instead of three.  If N / 3 has remainder 2, then the extra tubes are the right-most left tube, and the left-most right tube; and the extra tubes are shot with their immediate neighbors and the left-most center tube, i.e., the first W having 5 tubes shooting simultaneously.    

The standard syntax for cake descriptions described in Cake descriptions represents not just the visual appearance of the cake but also the physical construction of the cake tubes in rows.  For example, the standard syntax cake description, 49 Shot 5s (a) Red Pearl + (b) Blue Pearl Cake Z-Shape, 7 Rows, Row 1,3,5 (aaaaaaa), Row 2,4,6 (bbbbbbb), Row 7 (1.2/abababa/FNT) has seven rows of seven shots each, and the rows of tubes are angling all left and all right for the first six rows, and then fanned out for the last row.  The standard syntax is capable of representing most physically realistic cakes, but there are cakes that the standard syntax cannot represent, such as cakes with angles or timing that don’t match the standard row patterns described in Firing patterns for cake and slice rows.  For all the cakes that cannot be represented in the standard syntax, you can use the exact simulation syntax VDL to produce an exactly matching visual representation without any relationship to the physical construction of the cake. The show import functions and the “Effects > Create cake by combining selected effects…” function fall back upon the exact simulation syntax VDL automatically when the standard syntax is unable to represent the visual appearance of the cake.  If you create cakes without being particularly attentive to the exact angles or timing, you are likely to run into exact simulation syntax a lot.   Exact simulation syntax The equivalent exact simulation syntax VDL for the standard syntax cake description above is, 49 Shot 5s (a) Red Pearl + (b) Blue Pearl Cake, 1 Row (-30a93/-20a/-10a/0a/10a/20a/30a/b/20b/10b/0b/-10b/-20b/-30b/a/-20a/-10a/0a/10a/20a/30a/b/20b/10b/0b/-10b/-20b/-30b/a92/-20a/-10a/0a/10a/20a/30a/b/20b/10b/0b/-10b/-20b/-30b1200/a0/-20b/-10a/0b/10a/20b/30a/CAK)   As you can see, the exact simulation syntax has exactly one row.  The row specifies every shot in the cake individually.  Thus the cake in this example has 49 tube description sections in its exact simulation syntax firing description (the part in parentheses after “Cake, 1 Row”). The tube description sections are separated by slash characters.  Finally, after the last tube description section is the designator “/CAK” which indicates the phrase in an exact simulation syntax firing description.   Tube description sections Each tube description section specifies (1) the left/right angle, (2) the tube label, and (3) the delay after the tube.  The examples in Table 1 represent the first tube in the cake description above.   Table 1 – Components of tube description sections Component Example Explanation Angle -30 Integer angle in degrees with positive numbers to the right; required for the first tube description section, and optional in the following sections Tube label a A single letter referencing a label in the body of the cake description (see Cake descriptions); required for all tube description sections Delay 93 Integer milliseconds; optional for all tube description sections; ignored for the last section if present   Compressing the representation Since the exact simulation syntax represents every tube individually, a cake with a large number of tubes can yield quite a large exact simulation syntax representation.  To minimize the size of the representation, the optional components in the tube description section can be skipped.  When they are not present, the meaning is that they are the same as the previous tube.  In the example cake description above, the first 42 tubes are separated by 93ms delays, yet the number 93 is only required explicitly for the first tube in that sequence. The 42nd tube is followed by a 1.2s delay, or 1200ms, and the remaining tubes are all shot at the same time according to the FNT firing pattern.  Notice the “/-30b1200/a0/” near the end of the cake description, above.  In the exact simulation syntax representation, the 1200ms delay and the first 0ms delay obviously need to be specified, but only once.  Thus the cake description above requires only three delays in the representation in total: 92, 1200, and 0.  That’s a lot more compact that 49 delays! The same elision rule applies for the optional angle of the tube, except that the first angle is required in all circumstances. As a matter of convenience, if all of the delays are skipped, then the meaning is that all the delays are the same and that they add up to make the specified duration of the cake match the time from the first shot to the last break.  For effects without breaks, like comets, that is equivalent to saying the delays add up to the duration of the cake, but for shells the duration of the cake includes the lift time of the final shot, so the calculated delays need to take that into account.