Flash Platformer Game changing between two characters - actionscript-3

Question

So I'm new to coding as a whole and though I've messed a little with AS before I'm at an absolute loss. I've been using a pretty helpful website that gives a step-by-step on making a platformer/sidescroller, but one of the key things I want to include in my game is the ability to swap between two characters- i.e., if the player hit space or any other key, you could swap out to the other character (with different abilities and all).
My game only really has one big stage, and it's nothing complicated at all (it's something I'm trying to get done in about a little over 24 hours) which is why I decided not to make the character change for each "level"- because there's only one big one. I want the player to be able to decide when they want to play whichever character they fancy, but I have no idea how to go about it.
Uh, and if it helps clarify anything, I basically tried to follow that tutorial site as closely as I could without copying source code.
Thanks so much for taking the time.

Answer 1

You need to do a thing named "separate graphics from code". The tutorial says "convert your player to a Movie Clip Symbol ... create new Player(), add it to stage", then it teaches about how to control the player. You need to split your Player class into two, one remains as Player and contains code, the other is a skin class, barely a MovieClip without code. In your Player class you need to make a method to operate skins, the interface is up to you, I suggest a string lookup of a skin class, then you can tell your player to change skins both at costruction time and probably at runtime. An example:
public static const SKIN_DEFAULT:String="default";
public static const SKIN_RED:String="red";
public static const SKIN_BLUE:String="blue";
private static var SKINS:Object={
SKIN_DEFAULT:DefaultFace;
SKIN_RED:RedFace;
SKIN_BLUE:BlueFace;
}
Here, SKINS is a lookup object with keys as strings and value as Class references, these are the MovieClip symbol names an example expects to exist. Say you want a gray blob, a red angry face and a blue smiley save to be available, you name them DefaultFace, RedFace, BlueFace and put these names into this lookup object. Then, you need to make your player change skins. It's pretty easy once you get the drill.
public class Player extends Sprite {
// Sprite should do, as Player is now code-only
private var skin:MovieClip; // this will hold our player's skin
public function setSkin(newSkin:String):void {
// call this to change the skin
var newSkin:Class=SKINS[newSkin] as Class;
if (newSkin==null) return; // sanity check
if (skin) if (skin is newSkin) return;
// ^ changing skin for the same? We're that skin already!
if (skin) if (contains(skin)) removeChild(skin); // remove old skin
skin=new newSkin(); // create a new skin object
addChild(skin); // make it attached to the player
} // we're done!
// rest of code here
}
Make sure that your Player will at least put on default skin when created, or else you won't be able to see player move.
In order to trigger skin change, you can create an array of buttons, up to making them out of all possible SKINS (for this, either expose SKINS variable by declaring it public instead of private as it's now, or provide another means to get the list of classes), which will call player.setSkin() with a correct parameter.