Will make this brief, I have a game map with units on it and had finalized a fully interactive minimap where the units on the minimap have event listeners for rollover/rollout (displays a small popup unit data summary) and click (selects the "real" unit on the main game map and scrolls the viewpoint to that location). All done, tested, working.
I then implement an interactive scrollable unit list with more status summary data and dozens of objects with rollover/rollout/click listeners. All tested and working fine.
Then I go back and look at my minimap, and the listeners on the mini-ships aren't working anymore. Things tried:
Debug code to make sure listeners still being added
Debug to watch the one place where I remove those listeners to make sure that ain't happening unexpectedly
Debug to watch all the places I refresh that dialog to make sure every iteration adds the listeners back
Can't see that there is any transparent object on top intercepting
Checked mini-ship parents to make sure I didn't turn off mouseChildren or something like that somewhere
No added stage-level listener, in fact I killed all of them temporarily to test this
What happens when I debug with a breakpoint on the mini-ship listener handler is nada. It's no longer receiving mouse events. So either something I haven't thought of has stopped them from listening or something I don't know of is intercepting.
So what is the strategy here? How can I find the break in the chain?
Well knowing what the actual problem was certainly gives us the advantage of hindsight... that being said, you could have detected the error by adding a trace call inside your function that adds the listener and another one inside your function that removes it. Then you would have seen that it isn't getting re-added. Or you could set break points there.
Related
I have a pretty complex game with many views and many controllers, and it works really well but periodically lags. I am trying to fix up my code so it's as efficient as i can make it, but i have some questions as to who AS3 handles events.
Now here is a very basic example:
AppController loads 5 different OverlayControllers. Each one of those OverlayControllers dispatch an Event.COMPLETE when they are done that my AppController listens to. I have a constant EventListener listening to those OverlayControlllers no matter where I am in the game.
Should i only have those listeners there when the Overlay is open? And Remove them when they close?
Should i bypass the event listener period and just pass the AppController to the OverlayControllers so it can just call a public function instead of requiring an EventListener?
Just to be clear these aren't objects that i'm removing from the stage. They are just being hidden. If i ever remove an object i always remove its event listeners before destroying them.
First of all download Adobe Scout (http://www.adobe.com/devnet/scout/articles/adobe-scout-getting-started.html) and see what's causing the "lags" - probably garbage collection ...then fix the issue. Removing as many listeners as possible is always a good thing but make sure that those are causing the issue. Profile memory usage and try to keep object creation/destruction to a minimum to avoid garbage collection (during the main game loop).
I'm creating a little developer console for an AS3 AIR application, I'm wanting F12 to add the toggle the display of the console screen but I don't want to litter my program with a bunch of calls to the Console to show or hide it, I also don't really want to be re-creating the console on different screens of my application.
I'm wondering if there's a way or a place I can put my keyboard event to toggle the display that will handle it across the entire application? At the moment I've tried putting it into my Main class which calls the first screen in the hopes that would be able to handle it but as soon as I click on another screen my eventListener isn't called.
Any ideas?
You could add your event listener to FlexGlobals.topLevelApplication instead of specific views, this would achieve the reduction you require
For true application level keyboard handling, attach the listener on the NativeApplication.nativeApplication object.
NativeApplication.nativeApplication.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, toggleDevConsole,false,0,true);
Attaching the listener to the stage will only work when that particular stage (window) has the focus. This will become an issue if your application has multiple windows that require interaction.
For single window applications, either will work.
Woops, I'm not quite with it today!
For future reference I added the event listener to the Stage in my Main function and it's being picked up every time.
stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, toggleDevConsole, false, 0, true);
I've made a simple game in flex. You control falling blocks and your goal is to eliminate viruses. It's almost a copy of the 90s game dr Mario. I've made it so you control blocks with the arrow keys and you spin the block with space. Everything works fine as it should when playing. However when i switch to another program and the application is out of focus and i get back to the game, whenever i press space the game restarts. It's like it calls a function that reinitializes the game and resets all the variables to the start values.
The game is made with several NavigationContent components that acts like scenes. The game doesn't go back to the start screen when i press space, it just resets the game. Wich is really weird.
Are there any default method that is called that causes this behavior? Anyone have a clue?
EDIT: The issue arises - as it seems - exclusively when i tie a function to the space key (keyCode 32). I solved the issue by rebinding the key to "CTRL". But still it would be great to know what's up with the SPACE key. The game works fine with space if i use Internet Explorer. Other browsers doesn't work with the space key. It's the same issue with all of them.
EDIT: This is how the event listener looks:
this.stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, moveBlocksKeyboardEvent);
Even if i comment out all the code in the moveBlocksKeyboardEvent method the game still restarts. It's exclusively when hitting the SPACE-key. If i hold down the key the blocks spin. It's when i release the space button the game restarts. As if it's some reinitialization method tied to the KEY_UP event or something.
This type of behaviour is often tied to a null or undefined value, causing a nonsense-code jump which then results in a reset.
Make sure that that event handler for key down is attached to a valid object; if you are using "stage" then make sure it exists. When you move out of focus, the event handler may be left associated with a null object; when you reenter, it doesn't exist anymore, and therefore you get the reset behaviour.
This thread may help provide more detail:
Adding a key listener in Action Script 3
I know the method MouseEvent.updateAfterEvent() or KeyboardEvent.updateAfterEvent() which will force a re-render of the stage just after the event is handled rather than waiting for the next frame.
However, I need a method to force an immediate render at the very moment I call it. Is there such a method?
Actually my problem comes from the demential design of ActionScript's printing API (PrintJob). Inconsistent with the whole ActionScript architecture, when you call PrintJob.start(), everything is completely frozen while the printing dialog is shown until the user clicks the print or cancel button. Execution of any code after the PrintJob.start() call is resumed after that.
Among a lot of other much worse issues coming from this gigantic design flaw, there is mine:
public function someMouseOrKeyboardEventHandler() {
somethingThatUpdatesTheDisplayList();
var somePrintJob=new PrintJob();
somePrintJob.start();
//...
somePrintJob.send();
}
When this handler of mine is called, the changes made to the display list will not be visible until after the printing dialog has been closed, so I can't, for example, show something on the screen just before I open the print dialog.
updateAfterEvent() won't help a bit (already tried it). It won't change a thing, since it only forces rendering after the event handler code is executed.
Is there any updateRightNow()-like thing?
Nope, you unfortunately can't force an update in the middle of your code.
You can, however, wait until the next frame to call start() on the PrintJob; this will give Flash time to update the stage before everything freezes.
I am using the frames in the timeline of a .swf as pages in a flash app. The user can advance to the next page by clicking a button that takes her to the next frame. Similarly, it is possible to navigate to the previous frame/page as well.
Most of the content is placed on the stage (i.e. created by dragging an instance of a library symbol to the stage) but properties of those instances, such as .visible might be changed via actionscript. Also, some objects are loaded from external flash files and displayed programmatically with addChild / addChildAt.
The problem is, if I am on Frame N+1 and there is an object displayed on the stage programmatically (i.e. with addChild, not by having it placed on the stage) and navigate to Frame N where there is an object that is placed on the stage (i.e. dragged from the library),
then the instance of that object is undefined/null and throws an error if I try to set its properties (like .visible).
The error does not occur if I am moving to the NEXT frame, only if I am moving to the PREVIOUS one. Therefore I assume that some kind of initialization is not getting called while going one frame back.
I was also thinking that the objects would just not "live" to the next timeframe, that is, their value would be lost and re-initialized because of scope, but if there is no dynamically created object on the stage, I can navigate back and forth just fine.
Is there a way to ensure that the objects created on the stage do not disappear while navigating back to the previous frame?
The first, and more useful, part of the answer is this: timeline keyframes and scripts can give conflicting information about display objects - whether they should exist, where they should be, and so on. For example, when you add an item by playing into its frame, and then delete it with script, and then play into its frame again. When this happens, there's no unambiguously correct thing for Flash to do, so it tends to be unpredictable. I believe what generally happens is that once you fiddle with a given object via script, it's considered to no longer pay attention to the timeline - but your mileage will vary.
Having said that, the reason things are different when you play backwards is the second and more arcane part of the answer. Internally Flash functions differently when seeking forward and backwards on the timeline. Flash internally treats keyframes as changes to be applied in the forward direction, so as you play forward, it applies those changes in sequence. When you move backwards, however, from frame N+X to frame N, it doesn't scan through the intervening X frames reversing those changes - it jumps back to frame 1 and fast-forwards along to frame N. Normally, it amounts to the same thing and you don't need to worry about it, but when you get into the twitchy area where scripts and the timeline have a different idea of what should be on the stage, you're liable to see things behave differently depending on which way you jump (as you are now).
The super-short version is, for things to work predictably, try to ensure that any given object gets added, updated, and removed the same way - either all via script, or all via the timeline. When that seems impossible, fiddle with your content structure - usually, the best solution is to change your object into two nested ones, so that the things you want to do with script occur one level higher or lower than the things you want to do with the timeline.
I'm not sure I got your question right, but as3 does not instantiate elements on the timeline as soon as you gotoAndSomething, but later that frame.
That is, you can't
this.gotoAndPlay(10)
this.elementOnTimelineFrame10.DoSomething()
without errors.
I remember using this chunk of code in the past to work around this problem. It uses the Stage.Invalidate() function to wait for an Event.RENDER before trying to access and children, more info (although vague as hell) is here
private function init():void
{
stage.addEventListener(Event.RENDER, stage_renderHandler);
}
private function stage_renderHandler(evt:Event):void
{
// Run your code here
updateChildren();
}
private function enterFrameHandler(evt:Event):void
{
// triggers the RENDER event
stage.invalidate();
}
This also might me very costly (performance wise). I would strongly advise against dynamically adding/removing objects to an existing timeline, is there any way in which you can place an empty Sprite above the timeline animation and use that for all your dynamic content?
Hope this helps