I'm currently working on a UI based game where you have a "world map" containing a grid with zones (squares).
The zones are loaded through a json file coming from a database (MySQL) and are presented in a Grid Layout Group. Each zone has a zoneID in the database which is set in a local variable on the zone prefab.
When the player (you) are clicking on a zone, you will get a "Travel to"-button.
When the "Travel to" button is pressed, the idea is to "move" the player to that zone, coloring the image frame of the zone in yellow to highlight where you are. There is no actual player moving around, just UI and Text displaying the information.
My problem(s):
What would be a good and simple way to let the system know in which zone you are?
I'm thinking about a bool or something like (bool playerInZone), but how do I set it to true/false on other zones?
How do I reset the color when player leaves a zone and enters another? Currently I have no problem setting the color when pressing the button, but I can't seem to figure out how to reset the previous zone.
I can't seem to wrap my head around this...
I'm not sure if code is needed, I just need tips for how to think in this case.
Edit after understanding the question better:
I think I understand where your confusion comes from. You probably think that game-objects should manifest in the game view/physics in some way, where in fact many game-objects are just invisible units carrying game-logic related code.
I think a good solution would be to keep a manager game object that keeps track on the current location of the player. When you intercept a UI input that moves the player you'll do it through the manager, and the manager will be responsible to remove the highlighting from the current zone and apply it to the new zone.
It's probably a good idea to keep the "zones" as child objects of the said manager. Read about how to find game objects from parent game objects. I'm not sure which object intercepts the mouse click, but assuming that it's the zones themselves, than the manager can subscribe to events on the zones that will fire upon being clicked, or simply refactor to have a single object (perhaps the manager) handle the UI inputs.
Hope this is more helpful. Let me know if you need any clarification.
Previous comment
Use a collider trigger.
You can use the OnTriggerEnter and OnTriggerExit to set a bool whenever the player is in the zone. If you want coordination between different triggers and different zones you'll need a manager of some sort to handle this.
Related
I'm unclear on how memory works in Actionscript 3. I create a series of buttons and store the address to each of them in an array. Those buttons are used to play various music files, and I want the one that is playing to have a particular color (red) and the rest to be white. I call the following code when the currently selected button is to be replaced by a different button:
removeChild(songSelectButton[currSong]);
var songSelWhite:Button = new Button(null, "images/TrackButtonNo.jpg", TRACK_SELECT_WIDTH, TRACK_SELECT_HEIGHT);
songSelectButton[currSong] = songSelWhite;
That allows the array to have the right buttons. However, I am concerned about whether I am wasting memory. Does garbage collection take care of this, or do I need a better approach?
In most cases, garbage collection is pretty smart and can clean up whatever mess you make. But it can take its time getting around to it, and it can really tie up the CPU when it decides to do it's thing. So careful management of memory is valuable.
In your case, why create a new Button? You've got a Button already, and it looks like its already in the right spot and everything. Just change the image, any listeners, and any other properties that you really need to change. Then you won't have to worry about new buttons getting allocated and deallocated, and you won't even have to worry about a new layout being calculated.
So, I'm pretty much a beginner in Flash and Actionscript (using AS3, as I said in the title), and I'm trying to make a basic escape the room game. I haven't gotten far, and right now that's because every time I test my game (or publish preview it) the graphics get this annoying outline. Here it is when tested: http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn228/chokingondrama/flash.png
Every outline corresponds to some object present in the game, most of which have an alpha component of 0 since they're on different sides of the room. This didn't happen before, but once I added the code that allowed the player to change their view with the arrow (each viewpoint/wall is a different frame) these appeared.
It's a little different when published to HTML, basically it just gives each image a white background: http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/nn228/chokingondrama/html.png
Also, it would be nice if somebody could give me advice on how to make sure importing to flash won't result in lower quality.
Thanks in advance. If needed, I'll post any part of the code.
Some tips:
Don't set alpha to 0, instead use the visible property, setting movieclip.visible = false will make it a lot more efficient.
As for the importing and quality, after you import to stage or library, bring up the library (ctrl + l), and right click on the file you imported, go to properties. If it's an image, set compression to lossless, and allow smoothing.
For audio, go to file-> publish settings, and change audio stream and audio event (whichever you might use) to 128kbps.
As for your main question, I need more info, if you want you can post your source. It might be because of how you are placing your graphics on the stage.
For each of your MovieClips in question:
Try disabling button mode and see if the rectangles go away.
movieClipName.buttonMode = false;
If that doesn't help, or you really want button mode, try setting
movieClipName.tabEnabled = false;
There's a chance that since you added keyboard interaction each of your MovieClips are now expecting to be selected by the user when they press the tab key, much like any normal web form.
tabEnabled in the docs
You could also try
movieClipName.focusRect = false;
focusRect in the docs
I have a menu with five buttons. Menu is visible all the time. there is click event for each menu item. which slides corresponding movie clip from left to right. each movie clip has different nature events and respective animation and activity. for example tab 1 brings the video page. and within that movie clip I have video events like play pause volume and on complete etc. events and code. tab 2 has button group for Time and another button group Features. depending on user selection code will calculate and show value on a animated counter. tab 3 has button group for Time and button group Source. as per the user selection it will calculate and show the values as animated graph. and so on.
Right now I have all the individual tab movie clip has its own time line code for its own events. and some crossover variables and references with other tabs. Everything is working as expected. No problem. I know time line code is not the best way to do any complex project.
So, I would like to get the entire coding as one class or more classes if that is the correct way.
I am beginner as far as class logic. I have already created Main as document class and could control the general navigation of tabs and their initial look. But stuck at tab specific button events and other such unique events for the specific tab.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.
any similar example or suggestions.
First of all, thanks a lot for a prompt response. It seems like I am not even a beginner. I need to read a lot and probalbly grasp all fundamental concepts thoroughly. I have gone through both the links suggested in your comments. I am trying to digest the stuff slowly. I do not have any formal informal education regarding OOP or any sort of programming. To be honest, I have hard time understanding the code you have suggeted. Not because of your code but because of my level of caliber. I will have to spend some time to make myself clearer regarding events and sequence etc. different tab contents are as movieclips to main timeline and already placed on stage. It comes and goes to its corresponding tab button click event. I am not marking your answer as yes because I still need to my own homework based on your suggestion. Thanks a lot once again. I am sure I will ask few more questions later.
This is how I would design it:
I'd have a Menu Class, which only contains the buttons and "converts" clicks on them into more specific events. That might look something like this:
public Class Menu extends Sprite {
protected var buttons:Vector. = new Vector.();
public function Menu() {
super();
var loops:int = numChildren;
for (var i:int=0; i<loops; i++) {
var button:SimpleButton = getChildAt(i) as SimpleButton;
if (button) {
buttons[buttons.length] = button;
button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, broadcastMenuEvent);
}
}
}
public function broadcastMenuEvent(e:Event):void {
var button:DisplayObject = e.currentTarget as DisplayObject;
dispatchEvent(new Event(button.name, true));//bubbling, can catch at any level
}
}
The way this is built, you can change the events that are being dispatched simply by changing the name you give the instance of the button on stage. Note that you need to apply Menu as the Base Class and not the Class for this to work if you have "declare instances automatically" unchecked, because doing it that way allows the compiler to generate those instance names for you in a way your base Class doesn't have to know about.
At this point, you can then deal with those events in another place--whether it's your main document Class or whether you have a separate Controller.
I would define each of the Views you described as a separate Class as well. If you have objects coming and going on the stage, you can use one of the techniques described here to handle that. Otherwise, it's fairly straightforward to address your timeline instances from the base Class instead of timeline code. Again, you can listen for those events in the main document Class or a dedicated Controller--the main point is to make sure your Views are not making any important decisions and usually they should not be editing data.
You can choose to have your Main Document orchestrate how the tabs get added and removed (I'm a big fan of using the timeline with goToAndStop, but not everyone shares this preference), or, again, you can separate this logic out to a dedicated Controller. I would suggest that if it's possible to generalize how your Views work to have them implement a single Interface. That way, you can give them a single instance name and manage them all with the same getter/setter pair (assuming you go the timeline route).
Note the Flash compiler isn't terribly sophisticated in this regard, so if you do this and your Views extend different parent Classes, you'll get compiler warnings. Just ignore these--they don't mean anything.
The thing you shoud try to root out of your code completely is the part where Views are referencing each other. The only time it's acceptable for one View to know about another is when it's a parent knowing about its child. Even then, try to have as little specific knowledge as possible. Notice in the Menu View I wrote as an example, the parent only knows there may be some SimpleButtons, but it has no specific knowledge of where they are on stage, what, specifically, is in them, or even what there instance names are.
Instead of having your Views know about one another, have a third party (which, again, you can choose to use the main Document Class for or not) that transfers requests for state changes (in the form of events) from one to another.
I am using the Map control in Windows Phone 8.
I need to implement a page where user can select his location using the map control.
I am trying to know when the app was first manipulated by the user.
Some background info:
I saw that when the control is shown, it automatically centers the world map, and CenterChanged event is raised.
I am not able to understand how ManipulationStarted, ManipulationDelta and ManipulationCompleted work.
the first time I drag, ManipulationStarted is not called, only ManipulationCompleted.
I could consider the first manipulation by user as being the 2nd time the CenterChanged is fired.
But this is a hack or a guess, I am not happy not having a good understanding how it works.
The Map control intercepts and handles Manipulation events and as such you don't get all of them. Remember, once routed events are marked at e.Handled=true they no longer bubble up.
Depending on your Scenario WP8 exposes the UseOptimizedManipulationRouting property which might prove useful. Setting UseOptimizedManipulationRouting=false causes Map, Pivot and other controls to not swallow events for nested controls.
If that doesn't help, have a look at the following Nokia Wiki article where the author ran into the same problem as you did and used Touch.FrameReported to get out of it # http://www.developer.nokia.com/Community/Wiki/Real-time_rotation_of_the_Windows_Phone_8_Map_Control
I am making a Flash puzzle game. When the user loads the game, it needs to ask whether to resume the game from the last state (if it exists). I have a serialization system in place, but I need to ensure that the loaded state is definitely the last state.
One solution is to save the state to a SharedObject every time the state changes (when the player makes a move). However, the game state sometimes includes a countdown, so I'd have to be constantly (or periodically) saving the state in order to retain it. I guess this is acceptable, but it seems kludgey.
Is there any event which is fired when the swf is closed? Or anyone else have another elegant solution to this?
(I'm not using AIR, but solutions requiring AIR are appreciated.)
Edit: Another important point is that I may not have control over the embedding HTML for the game, as it may be syndicated to many sites. So solutions involving javascript aren't ideal.
If your Flash is hosted on a HTML page, you can use the 'Window is closing' event notification to fire a message into your Flash object either using old-skool GetVariable() or new-stylee FlashCall() mechanisms.
Whether you'll actually be able to persist state before your Flash object is destroyed is another question... you could always do the (evil) 'Are you sure you want to close/navigate away from this window?' alert that some sites use.
Handling DOM Events in Flex
HTML 5 events
The on-close event sounds the right solution, but I wonder if you could 'split' your serialisation? i.e. save the full puzzle state on each move, but also have a secondary 'lightweight' state for your countdown (or anything similar) which could be updated each time the countdown changes.
That may be easier than trying to catch the close event and save before the page is destroyed (especially as browsers are not consistent in this area).
this one should help you