How can I prevent MovieClips existing throughout multiple frames? (Flash, AS3) - actionscript-3

Heyya, Community!
So, I've been programming in Flash ActionScript 3.0 for a few years, gradually relearning everything. However, I can't figure this out for the life of me -- I've been forced to use inefficient work-arounds since now. And I just needed to know, how can I stop MovieClips added via The Stage consisting through frames?
Code;
Frame 1;
import flash.display.MovieClip;
var block_mc:MovieClip = new Block();
addChild(block_mc);
block_mc.x = 100;
block_mc.y = 100;
And then, on Frame 2...
stop();
How can I stop this issue from happening? If you want a more specific example, you can download the supplied .fla file.
Is there an efficient work-around other than creating for() loops to delete my greater-than 100 MovieClips? Is there no work-around? Please help!
Please note, to open the file you need a version of Adobe Flash Professional; I recommend using Adobe Flash Professional CC if you have it, since I used it.
If you need any more details, just ask! <3
Link to FLA: http://www.mediafire.com/download/tczfyj3jg3sofsj/Problem.fla

Related

Flash CS6 Importing sounds

I'm working on a Flash project in CS6 and need to import a sound to my library but I'm having endless problems with it. I'm using external files in Actionscript 3.0 (e.g. I cannot do a URLRequest as it won't work externally, need to import)
I'm using a sound that should work, some errors go in that it can't be over 160kbps, this is only at 32 in the MP3 file. I converted it to an AIFF, no success, a WAV? no success.
If it's an MP3 I simply get "Couldn't import "
If it's a AIFF or WAV I get "One or more files were not imported because there was a problem reading them"
Adobe suggest you need to files under 160kbps, all are set at 32kbps to be safe.
Another suggestion said you needed Quicktime 7.7.1 (or newer) and iTunes 10.5.5.3 (or newer) for this to work with an MP3 file. I have Quick 7.7.3 and iTunes 11.0 so I really have no idea of the problem.
Can anyone help, this project needs finished quickly.
Thanks.
John.
Could be to do with bitrates.
I was running into issues with some mp3 files that I had converted from wav using Audacity. It was a specific few that wouldn't work, so I went back to Audacity and compared the working-mp3-yielding wavs to the non-working. I noticed that the working wavs had a bitrate of 44100Hz the non-working had 48000Hz. Setting the project rate ( bottom left corner ) to 44100Hz before exporting yielded mp3s that imported into flash with no problem.
In short:
48000 Hz = naughty
44100 Hz = nice
This is a weird problem here's a simple code snippet that load and play an MP3 sound AS3 doesn't support WAV natively :
//sound object
var sound:Sound = new Sound(new URLRequest("music.mp3"))
var soundChannel:SoundChannel = sound.play();
Hope this help :)
This post is kind of old but I thought I would post an answer after running into the same problem. I am also using Flash Pro in CS6. What you want to do is to embed the sound into your FLA so that when your SWF is compiled the sound will go with it. Khaled's answer is great but this issue needs a little more TLC.
What worked for me was to get an application that edits sound clips. I downloaded the open source 'Audacity.' In the bottom left corner of Audacity you can edit the project rate. Take it down to about 1600 or lower. Then save the project and export the sound as an mp3.
Finally, make sure that your sound clip is in the same folder as your FLA. Import into your FLA (this should work now) and export your sound for actionscript by right clicking the sound in the library, going to properties. Change the name of the class to whatever you want (at least get rid of the '.mp3' from the class name).
Then use the following code (which is different from the typical URL loader for sounds):
//sound is a constructor variable under your document class
public class DocumentClass extends MovieClip
{
var yourSound:yourSoundClass;
public function DocumentClass()
{
init();
}
function init():void
{
yourSound = new yourSoundClass();
}
}
Then play your sound by using yourSound.play(); This technique will embed your sound within the SWF so it will go wherever the SWF goes. I hope that helps anyone who runs into this.

Problems implementing a Timline Editor in my level editor in Adobe AIR.

I'm currently working on an Adobe AIR project to pump out my level editor but I'm running into an issue. I basically need to implement an interactive movie editor. My question is how would you recommend I get the timeline editing started? Functionality wise it needs to be able to set tween key frames for position, scale, and alpha. Any ideas?
I've also been trying to look into pulling tween data from a swf. I'm not entirely sure how applicable this would be.
I'm not sure what you mean by movie editor - movie as in a sequence of images(bitmaps) or movie as in flash MovieClip ?
If it's the later, you could use a tweening engine like TweenLite to do the hard lifting and then it's up to you how you organize the scrollable GUI for the timeline (plenty of examples out there, starting with Flash/After Effectts/Blender/etc.) Feedback from your designer/animator is crucial I presume.
Pulling data from Flash could also be possible. If you'd like to parse the swf you can try Claus Wahlers' awesome as3swf library. Be sure to check some of his posts:
SWF Timeline Reconstruction with as3swf
Flash IDE Inspired Flex 4 Timeline Component
Another option would be to use jsfl (JavaScript scripting in the Flash IDE) and parse the tweens your designer/animator creates. It should be a matter of parsing a XML for the tween(be it old/classic or new/motion). If you go the JSFL route, you might also find the xJSFL project useful.
Also, for inspiration on game/animation tools check out Spriter

AS3.0 Replay the whole movie (*SWF file)

I made a small game in Actionscript 3.0 and flash.
When the player wins the game or is 'game over' the player should have a option to replay the game.
So my question is: Is there a way to replay the whole movie with Actionscript? I know, i could reset the timeline back to 0, and re-instantiate all the classes, movieclips, var's ect... but i was wondering if anyone knows a easier solution.
Simply do this:
import flash.net.*;
//...
navigateToURL(new URLRequest(stage.loaderInfo.url), "_level0");
You can remove the swfObject and add it again. Look here. This is the swfObject reference.
Reload the page, where you've embedded the swf into, may be the easiest way.
The programmers way would be to encapsulate your whole application into a single class (extending Sprite or MovieClip) which will be attached to the stage. For restarting the game you could simply remove that instance from the stage and add a newly created onto the stage.
Or make a loader swf, that loads your game. Then if the game should be restarted, discard (unload) the instance and load it again.
Its hard to tell you what you can do, if we don't know, how your project is structured.

Going from Flash 8 to CS3

After many years of using Flash 8, I'm moving to CS3 at work. I know I'll have to learn AS 3.0 so, does anyone have any good references or summaries of the major/most noticeable changes? Also, are there any tips/tricks for the flash environment? After spending a few minutes in CS3, I noticed that you can't directly attach actionscript to a button, which is new to me. Any other such pitfalls to watch over?
I made the total switch just about 3 months ago, here are some things that helped me ramp up rather quickly:
1) Do everything in Class files
A lot of AS3 tutorials out there deal with just code pasted on the timeline (which I can't stand because now you have to hunt for what import you need), but is fine for quick tiny stuff. In the long run it's way better work primarily in Class files. Learning how Classes work opened a huge door for me, it was the same feeling/experience I had when I first discovered Functions in AS2 :)
2) Keep graphics in library and off the workspace
Example, you have a jpg, gif, png file you just imported into your library. Made a movieClip and gave it a class name(MyButton). Now the code below will place the graphic into the workspace for you:
var myButton:MovieClip = new MyButton();
myButton.x = 6;
myButton.y = 22;
myButton.buttonMode = true;
addChild(myButton);
3) Get use to the new button code in AS3
It's something all of us new converts had to deal with painfully, but now it's a piece of cake :)
myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, clickThis);
function clickThis(event:MouseEvent):void
{
navigateToURL(new URLRequest("form.html"), "_self");
//navigateToURL(request, '_self');
}
4) Make sure you remove Event Listeners after use
It took me a bit to wrap my around this one... remove em why? Oh they are still running in the background and when I listen again I'll get all kinds of mutated errors.
private function volDown(e:MouseEvent):void
{
masker.width = volControl.mouseX;
userVolume = (masker.width / 100) * 1;
volControl.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, volMove);
}
private function volUp(e:MouseEvent):void
{
lastVolPoint = masker.width;
setVolume(userVolume);
e.updateAfterEvent();
volControl.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, volMove);
}
5) Don't forget to pass Events
I'm not a programmer by trade and this has caused so much grief, I'm glad I'm done with this birthing pain:
myButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, clickThis);
Since the clickThis function is launched via an Event, you have to pass: event:MouseEvent into it like so:
function clickThis(event:MouseEvent):void
Because the code below will throw the dreaded AS3 "Access of undefined property" error that new AS3 guys will always run into.
function clickThis():void
6) Read and post questions on StackOverflow... a lot!
btw I'm still a noob and originally a designer then AS2 dev, I still don't know why we put :void behind a function name.. if we have similar coding backgrounds I hope all that helps :)
I suggest you to look at the ActionScript language migration page on the Adobe devnet. It offers quite a lot articles about the key changes with ActionScript 3.
To answer your problem with the actions on a button, this no longer works (and was already with ActionScript 2 not the best way to do it). AS3 requires the code to be centralized on the timeline. So for giving a button some action, you'll need to give it an instance name and add an event listener for the CLICK event, like this:
function doSomething ( event:MouseEvent ):void
{
trace( "test" );
}
myButton.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, doSomething );
Get an Actionscript 3 IDE. Such as Flash Builder, FlashDevlop, or FDT. This will force you to learn really fast.

Flash AS3 error when importing 3D-tweened movieclip

I've been working on an AS3 application and it's nearing completion. At the same time, one of the designers I work with has been building a movieclip in a separate .fla that acts as an intro animation to the application. The intro uses the 3D motion tweening capabilities of Flash CS4 / Player 10, and runs fine in the .fla in which it was built.
The problem is that when I import the movieclip into the main .fla for the application, when I dynamically instantiate the movieclip and add it to the stage, I get a barrage of the following runtime error:
ReferenceError: Error #1069: Property null not found on fl.motion.KeyframeBase and there is no default value.
at fl.motion::KeyframeBase/getValue()
at fl.motion::MotionBase/getValue()
at fl.motion::Animator3D/setTime3D()
at fl.motion::AnimatorBase/set time()
at fl.motion::AnimatorBase$/processCurrentFrame()
at fl.motion::AnimatorBase$/parentEnterFrameHandler()
I'm guessing just based on the number of errors like this that I receive that there's one per keyframe in the tweening movieclip. I've checked to ensure that the Flash publish settings are identical across the two .fla files, and although the stage sizes differ slightly, I don't think that's the issue here. I've also googled the issue and found nothing but but this lonely thread on kirupa.
Any thoughts?
Okay--turns out the problem was that we had a local version of the fl.motion package in the Actionscript source paths that was out of date. Now everything's tweening along happily!
As far as I know you once you apply a 3D Motion Tween to a clip, you can no longer modify it by actionscript.
I'd suggest either copying the clip, without the tween, so you can access and modify it via actionscript, as for the animation, maybe go for Copy Motion as Actionscript 3.0. It will spit out a nasty looking bulk of code. The alternative is to 'redo' the animation using something like TweenLite which has nicer syntax. You would select the motion tween, give it an instance then use instance.motion.keyframes to loop through the keyframes and get the position and rotation values for example.
It's not as ideal as it should be :(
Have a look at the flashthusiast.com website for more insights on the new tweens and how to work with them.
Goodluck,
George