I've looked around the site, but as a beginner, the AS3 lingo is a bit beyond me. I know that parent/child is used to pass information, commands, and variables between scenes and movie clips embedded in each other, but I don't quite understand HOW or WHY it works.
When I say beginner, I mean it. This is my first flash project. In case it helps, this is what I'm trying to do:
I'm making a type effectiveness calculator for Pokemon. I've successfully made 3 movie clip "dials" that will cycle through the different Pokemon Types when buttons on them are pressed. 18 Types, 18 frames per "dial". 19 frames on the third "dial", for a blank type.
I've also made a 4th movie clip that will display the effectiveness, from 0.25x up to 4x.
So, basically, I need to...
1) Pull either a numerical variable (or frame number) up from each of the "dials"
2) Calculate the effectiveness based on those numbers in Scene 1 (or a new, all-inclusive movie clip if that's easier)
3) Then send the result (or desired frame number) down to the 4th movie clip to display the effectiveness.
Aaaaaaaand I have zero clue how to do that. I'd appreciate an explanation as opposed to just telling me how. I WANT to understand.
Thanks in advance, everyone!
You are wanting to understand Object Oriented Programming. Specifically the concept of "containers". Google "AS3 OOP containers tutorial" and you'll find what you need.
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I'm primarily a C++ programmer trying my hand at Flash and ActionScript3 for game development. I'm finding myself a little confused/constricted by the whole Parent/Child relationship, and was wondering if anybody here could give a little insight.
I'm currently making an Astro Panic clone, where each EnemyShip object also contains an array of EnemyShots. My problem is this: when one of the players' shots collides with an EnemyShip, the ship is supposed to disappear. However, at the moment, if the shot collides with one of a ship's shots, this also causes the entire corresponding EnemyShip (as well as all it's previous shots) to disappear. On top of that, it seems that the entire area between an EnemyShip and it's shot(s) trigger a collision. For example, in the following image, if the player's shot reaches anywhere within the red rectangle, the game will register it as the enemy having been hit:
Obviously I can't have this, but I'm unsure how to deal with it. Is there any way to separate child objects from parents on the stage, or is that just not how ActionScript works?
If I were you I would create a clip for all the shots. This means there would be 3 principal clips: the player, the enemies and the shots. This way you could achieve shot-ship and shot-shot interactions.
I hope this helps.
You should separate the model (Ships, Shots, Enemies) from their actual representation. Although a shot might be associated with a ship, the visual representations might share the same parent.
So basically I'm trying to say that you can flat the display hierarchy.
I'm creating a game using Flash Develop and ActionScript 3.0 and I can't figure out how to make a "Character Creation" menu, in the sense that, I want to animate a movieclip full of images (head, torso, arms, etc.) and then change out any image with another.
So I'd like players to be able to choose what kind of sunglasses they want their character to have, for example, and the different sunglasses will keep the animation that I made with the original ones.
From what I know so far I can export a movie clip as a .swf and use it as such, but how do I change out images and keep the animation?
Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
I don't know how much actionscript you know.. but if you just want an idea how to do it and not the whole thing in code...
I would personally make different movie clips for the different parts of the body that can be changed and then change frames in that move clip. For example one movie clip with different hairstyles, one with (sun)glasses and so on.. and then just go to then next frame in the "hairMC" to change the hairstyle.
The way I'd do it is to create MovieClips that all implement the same Interface and then have other MC's higher up that know how to use the particular Interface. For example, if you had an IArm, it might know how to swing and how to grasp (and it might grasp by using an IHand). A fat ITorso might attach the arms at a different spot than a thin one.
And your Character might have an IHead, ITorso, etc. When you created a Character, you could either pass in these components via the constructor (I'm not a big fan of constructor arguments for Views, but it's one way to do this), or you can expose setters on your Character that allow you to set these properties one at a time.
This gives you tremendous flexibility in how to put your character together--none of the pieces know precisely how the others are put together, but the methods they need to operate on are in place, so you can put in any implementation you can think of.
Or that's what I think, at least.
I just began with AS3 and I'm trying to do a little game where one ball moves on its own and the other one is handled by the player. So far, so good. That works.
What isn't working is hitTestObject(); it just returns true when it's like 2 cm from the other object. Here's a picture so you can see: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/37057843/coll2.jpg
I've read that hitTestObject just creats a rectangle around the objects and then tests for collisions on those rectangles, is it because of that?
If you need any piece of code I'll deliver. I know there are some other opensource libraries/engines like Box2D to solve this in a better way, but I don't want to jump to engines directly.
Thanks for reading!
Yes, hitTestObject will use the clips bounding box.
Check out this link, it has a lot of great information as well as a class that will do what you're looking for
http://sierakowski.eu/list-of-tips/39-collision-detection-methods-hittest-and-hittestobject-alternatives.html
Direct link to the package
http://code.google.com/p/collisiondetectionkit/
I'm trying to create a multi-level dungeon adventure in Flash CS4. The layout is an instance created of a symbol called Level, within the symbol are multiple wall subsymbols (wall), instances of Wall. There is a collision routine to stop the player walking through the walls, called from Wall.As.
Level is drawn about the centre point (0,0).
When I create an instance on the stage of Level (level), the collision tester is using the xy coordinates for the walls drawn about 0,0, not the "real" xy where it's appearing on the stage.
So what I need to know, is how to "update" the xy for each wall subsymbol with the live stage information, overriding the XYs drawn in the parent. It has to be updated unfortunately (I can't keep it static), as the levels are big so have to scroll.
Thanks for your advice.
With all due respect forget your approach, you're reinventing the wheel for nothing and probably to end up getting worse performance. What you need is pixel-perfect collision detection and probably including basic physics so already we're talking a huge amount of work. If you want to build levels in a design way for a game, use this, it'll blow your mind how awesome/easy/cool this is:
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=135
Its always a guess when trying to answer questions like this, as there are a lot of unknowns. That being said, in programming, there are always more than a few ways to solve a problem. Examine your collision detection routine - if you worked with hitTestPoint, and the point that was being tested (mouseX,Y or your main actor) with localToGlobal, you likely wouldn't need to test for the x,y variables of your collision objects. Read up on those two subjects and this question might be rendered moot.
At any rate, you could update relative coordinates in your Wall.as instance by leveraging globlaToLocal:
public function get curLoc():Point
{
return globalToLocal(new Point(this.x, this.y));
}
and retrieve them from your parent class as a point you can then test against:
trace(_wall.curLoc);
Hope that helps
I suppose you could accomplish what you're trying to do by manipulating the transform property of the wall symbols, but honestly I would concur with Ascension Systems and just abandon your collision testing routine for something different.
You may not need to go all out with a physics engine for your game, in which case just use hitTestObject to do the collision detection.
I'm brand new to Flash (and game programming, really), but want to learn a bit of it. My overall learning project is to create a Monopoly clone in Flash. Unfortunately, I'm struggling to get over even my first hurdle - how to create the board graphically, and how then to deal with it in the code. So far, my thoughts are to break the board down into the different sizes of tiles (the normal property ones, the corner 4 and a large one for the middle section), then somehow place these all in the correct position relative to each other and keep that positioning correct as the pieces (and thus the camera view) move about the board. (And, hopefully some day have a zooming ability too...)
Is this a good approach, or is there a better one? Does anyone know where I can find a tutorial specifically on creating board games in Flash (any sort really, wouldn't have to be Monopoly but just a game that has a board which tokens move across - and preferably which has to pan as well).
Also, as an aside, is there any way to have a dynamically coloured rectangle in a flash MovieClip (like you can have dynamic textboxs)? I ask because it would be useful if there was, as I could generate every property tile with just one MovieClip which took a name, a value and a colour...
everything you describe here you can do pretty easily once you get the hang of component sprites. personally i would make a single sprite that will then hold all of the "tiles" in the game, this would allow you to "zoom" the board while keeping all the pieces relative:
if you create this parent to have an addTile() and getTile(index:int):Sprite method then you can easily push the tiles and retrieve them from an array, so that Go is at index 0, old kent road is at 1 etc. that way you can use a single integer value to determine the position of the player piece as you can then use getTile(int).x etc.
the position of the tiles themselves can be worked out relative to the others. if you have a tile that is 20px wide and 40px high then you can position the tile as x = index * 20 for the first row, after the initial 11, you need to rotate them all and then use the y index instead (rotation = 90; x = 11*20; y = (index-11)*20) this will depend exactly on your origin point of your Sprite.
to draw coloured boxes you use the graphics of the Sprite, there are plenty of tuts on API drawing out there, but here is a basic box of 10x10px:
var drawing:Sprite = new Sprite();
drawing.graphics.beginFill(0x0000FF);
drawing.graphics.drawRect(0, 0, 10, 10);
drawing.graphics.endFill();
Another approach to your question could be to learn about Object Oriented Programming. That may not solve your representing the board graphically straight away, but it would definitely help you structure your game.
With OOP, you could define a "Property" Class with a set of properties such as streetName , color , price etc... I haven't played Monopoly in a while but you can get the general idea, i.e. to create a base object and make it specific by setting the object's properties. Your question about the colored rectangle can actually apply to other properties, a great way to avoid unnecessary repetition.
Broadly speaking OOP tends to emulate real life situations, so you could actually look at your Monopoly game, break it into its various parts, find common properties etc... I won't start a lesson here :) I'd be pretty bad at it, but there's plenty of resources out there . Look for OOP, Design Patterns & Actionscript3.
After a little research, you may find that your question about how to handle graphics may not be such a problem after all.
Your questions are way too general. I'm sure you don't want us to walk you through your whole project right?
Now to gain some experience, I suggest to you simply work through a few flash gaming tutorials. There are a LOT of those, I googled for 2-3 seconds and found this:
http://pelfusion.com/tutorials/35-flash-game-development-tutorials-fla-files/
I'm sure you feel disappointed by this answer, but this is the first step in solving your own problems. The internet has more than enough general game tutorials already. If you have specific problems, we might be of better help to you.
I assume with dynamically colored rectangles, you mean simply changing the color during runtime. Well you simply give the rectangle a name, and change the color property of it in code. Like this: rectangle.Color = Something.
You might want to start out with a simpler project just to learn some of the basics, maybe a little game where the player has to move a rectangle from one side of the screen to the other using the arrow keys or mouse, upon which a score is incremented or something. This will help teach you how the coordinate system works, among other things.
To draw stuff using code, you can create a new Sprite or MovieClip object and use its graphics property to draw primitive shapes (rectangles, etc.) to it at runtime.