My aim is to change the frame rates of my individual (looping) movie clips through clickable controls (slow/med/fast). I've heard it isnt possible to achieve this through as3/flash alone, so I've tried greensock's TweenMax... However I can't seem to figure out how to do this. Is there anyone that could help?
box1.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, box1down);
function box1down(event:MouseEvent):void {
//FRAMERATE CODE HERE
}
Many thanks!
Here is the API doc for TweenMax: http://www.greensock.com/as/docs/tween/com/greensock/TweenMax.html
If you have multiple movieclips that you are trying to control, you can just create an abstract class with the functionality you want and extend that class. So something like:
public class ControlledMovieClip extends MovieClip {
public function ControlledMovieClip() {
stop();
}
public function animate(frameRateInSeconds:Number):void {
TweenMax.to(this, frameRateInSeconds, { frame: this.totalFrames - 1, repeat: -1, ease: Linear.easeNone });
}
}
Have all your movieclips that are looping extend that class, and then you could call the animate function on the objects in your box1down event handler.
I haven't tested that code so you might need a gotoAndStop(1) at the end of each iteration.
It's possible through Actionscript alone it just requires you to handle the frame progression yourself (instead of using mc.play() you stop the movieclip and call nextFrame() yourself).
Lets say a Movieclip (myMC) has 20 frames of animation. To manually run the animation at normal speed you simply call myMC.nextFrame(); on every frame of your project (using an ENTER_FRAME listener for example).
To have the animation run at half speed you can use a frame count and a frame trigger:
var frameTick = 0;
var frameAnimTrigger = 2;
function Update(e:Event):void
{
frameTick++;
if(frameTick == frameAnimTrigger)
{
myMC.nextFrame();
frameTick = 0;
}
}
Because nextFrame is only called every other frame the animation appears to run at half speed.
Related
I have a Movieclip on my stage which contains two buttons: Back and Next. Also on the timeline, I have another Movieclip which contains an animation. After the next button is clicked, I'd like to have the animation transition into the next animation without jumping. So, is there any way I can listen for the animation to be finished so that I can time the transitions seamlessly?
Here is the code for my Next and Back buttons (which are movieclip buttons which is why there is all of the extra code) which just switch between frames as of now:
//NEXT BUTTON
nextBtn.buttonMode = true;
nextBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, nextBtnOver);
nextBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.ROLL_OUT, nextBtnOut);
nextBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, nextBtnDown);
nextBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, nextBtnUp);
function nextBtnOver(e:MouseEvent):void
{
nextBtn.gotoAndPlay("over");
}
function nextBtnOut(e:MouseEvent):void
{
nextBtn.gotoAndPlay(9- (nextBtn.currentFrame-1));
}
function nextBtnDown (e:MouseEvent):void
{
nextBtn.gotoAndPlay("down");
}
function nextBtnUp (e:MouseEvent):void
{
nextBtn.gotoAndPlay(5);
MovieClip(root).nextFrame();
}
//BACK BUTTON
backBtn.buttonMode = true;
backBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.ROLL_OVER, backBtnOver);
backBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.ROLL_OUT, backBtnOut);
backBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, backBtnDown);
backBtn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, backBtnUp);
function backBtnOver(e:MouseEvent):void
{
backBtn.gotoAndPlay("over");
}
function backBtnOut(e:MouseEvent):void
{
backBtn.gotoAndPlay(9- (backBtn.currentFrame-1));
}
function backBtnDown (e:MouseEvent):void
{
backBtn.gotoAndPlay("down");
}
function backBtnUp (e:MouseEvent):void
{
backBtn.gotoAndPlay(5);
MovieClip(root).prevFrame();
}
Thanks, any help is appreciated.
If your animations are timelined, call an animationComplete function in the last frame of your animation movieClip. This function would live at the same scope as your posted code above, so you just have to be able to path to it properly from within the animation clip. For instance, if the code is one level outside the animation movieClip (the mc's parent) then you might call this.parent.animationComplete(), which would contain the code you want to execute when the animation finishes.
According to your comment,
I tried this, and it works - except in order for
it to advance to the next point you have
to click the next button at exactly the right frame.
I'd like to make it so you can click it at any point in the Movieclip, and it
will play the remainder of the Movieclip before proceeding
to the next frame. Here's my code for what I've added: function
nextBtnUp(e:MouseEvent):void {
nextBtn.gotoAndPlay(5); if (MovieClip(root).animationTest.currentFrame ==
MovieClip(root).animationTest.totalFrames) MovieClip(root).nextFrame();
}
Thank you for the help so far
You have it most of it figured out, so to finish can add stop() in the code at the last frame of your MovieClips, or you can do this (the more complex version):
yourClip.yourFirstClip.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, stopAtLastFrame);
yourClip.yourSecondClip.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, stopAtLastFrame);
function stopAtLastFrame(e:Event):void
{
if(e.currentTarget.currentFrame === e.currentTarget.totalFrames)
// ^Note that no conversion is being made, so you can have 3 equal signs
{
e.currentTarget.stop();
}
}
I am working on a news ticker in Flash AS3. The code is reading some RSS from CNN and generates a MovieClip with headline text one after another. Now this movieclip starts scrolling from right to left. For scrolling I am using TweenLite. I don't want any easing, just want a regular and smooth scrolling.
I have used both options:
TweenLite.to(news_mc, 60, {x:minX} );
and
TweenLite.to(news_mc, 60, {x:minX, ease:Linear.easeNone} );
But, in both case, the animation is not smooth. It starts scrolling speedily and at last it becomes very slow.
I've seen something similar to this. Are you implementing your TweenLite call in a loop? You should only be calling for a tween on the target object once. Only once that tween is finished or you want a brand new tween on that object should you call TweenLite.to with that target object again.
Seeing as how you're only after a linear tween, would it not be simpler to simply increment/decrement the target's X every frame? Something like this:
this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEnterFrame)
private function onEnterFrame(e:Event):void
{
if(news_mc.x > minX)
{
news_mc.x -= 3 //This is a shot in the dark, tweak this for your values
}
else
{
news_mc.x = maxX
}
}
Ok, so I'm a beginner at AS3 and Flash and I managed to put this code together for an animation. A Button called start_btn is supposed to start and stop a movieclip called main_mc. On the first click of the Button, the Movieclip is supposed to play (which it does), however on the second click, the movie stops in the middle of its animation (which I don't want). My question is, when you click the Button a second time, how can i get the Movieclip to finish playing its animation then stop on the last frame?
I thought about using if (main_mc.currentFrame == main_mc.totalFrames); {main_mc.stop(); but the Movieclip still does not stop on the last frame. The Movieclip itself also has a gotoAndPlay(2); command on the last frame so that the animation repeats before the Button is clicked a second time.
here is the code i have:
`start_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, mainaniS);
function mainaniS(event:MouseEvent):void
{
main_mc.play();
start_btn.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, mainaniS);
start_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, mainaniSt);
}
function mainaniSt(event:MouseEvent):void
{
if (main_mc.currentFrame == main_mc.totalFrames);
{main_mc.stop();}
start_btn.removeEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, mainaniSt);
start_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, mainaniS);
}`
Try main_mc.gotoAndStop(main_mc.totalFrames).
I was going to provide a quick and dirty solution, but decided instead to try and explain a few of the issues with your current implementation and attempt to refactor and explain and better one. Unfortunately I don't have access to Flash right now, so the code is untested.
You're adding and removing event listeners often, which is generally a bad idea. Instead, since you're using a single button to perform multiple functions it would make sense to track the button state in a separate variable. In this case, a boolean for whether or not the movieclip is currently playing.
var playing:Boolean;
Now we can combine the mainaniS and mainaniSt into one and perform a different action based on whether or not the movieclip is playing, and just keep the one eventlistener on the button. I've also taken the liberty of naming the method something more meaningful:
start_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onStartClick);
function onStartClick(event:MouseEvent):void
{
if(playing) {
playing = false;
}
else {
playing = true;
main_mc.play();
}
}
You may be wondering why we don't call main_mc.stop() in the first block: the reason is that you don't want to stop the movieclip as soon as you click the button, but after the movieclip has finished playing if the button has been clicked. Therefore, we just set playing to false to indicate that we want it to stop later.
Finally, we need to make sure the movieclip stops upon completion, but only if playing is false. To do this we add a listener to movieclip that is called every frame, and checks whether playing is false, and if it's on the last frame. Note that the last frame is actually totalFrames - 1: this is because the frame numbers start from zero rather than one (i.e. if totalFrames is 3, the frame numbers will be 0, 1, 2).
main_mc.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, animate);
function animate(event:Event):void {
if(!playing && main_mc.currentFrame == main_mc.totalFrames - 1) {
main_mc.stop();
}
}
All the refactored code together:
var playing:Boolean;
start_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onStartClick);
main_mc.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, animate);
function onStartClick(event:MouseEvent):void
{
if(playing) {
playing = false;
}
else {
playing = true;
main_mc.play();
}
}
function animate(event:Event):void {
if(!playing && main_mc.currentFrame == main_mc.totalFrames - 1) {
main_mc.stop();
}
}
We have an effect we like to use where we synchronize a series of slides with a sound. As the sound plays, we show each slide (which is its own frame in a MovieClip), and slowly scale the slide up to provide a little bit of movement. Our sounds tend to be equivalent to one frame on the parent timeline, so we look to see what sound is playing for that frame to calculate how long each slide should be displayed for.
The issue we have is that occasionally we need to "stretch" one of these animations across two or more slides, which means we need to look ahead and calculate the slide length based on the combined length of the sounds during the span of frames where the MovieClip that contains the slide images is displayed.
However, I haven't been able to find a property that tells me how many timeline frames a MovieClip is displayed for (note that this would be different from totalframes, the number of frames that clip contains). Is it just wishful thinking that such a property exists, or can someone point me in the right direction on this?
I'm not sure if I'm understanding the problem correctly but have you tried MovieClip.currentFrame?
Can you create a class like this, which will keep track of the amount of frames it has been present on the DisplayList:
package
{
import flash.display.MovieClip;
import flash.events.Event;
public class ExtMovieClip extends MovieClip
{
// Properties.
private var _lifetime:int = 0;
// Constructor.
public function ExtMovieClip()
{
addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, _added);
}
// Was added to the DisplayList.
private function _added(e:Event):void
{
removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, _added);
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, _track);
addEventListener(Event.REMOVED_FROM_STAGE, _removed);
}
// Was removed from the DisplayList.
private function _removed(e:Event):void
{
removeEventListener(Event.REMOVED_FROM_STAGE, _removed);
removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, _track);
addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, _added);
}
// Increment the lifetime of this MovieClip.
public function _track(e:Event):void
{
_lifetime ++;
}
// Retunrns the lifetime of this MovieClip.
public function get lifetime():int
{
return _lifetime;
}
}
}
It's been a while since I've had to write Actionscript that really needs to integrate with the timeline (in this case, controlling a series of frames that must happen in a certain sequence) and I am trying to figure out what to do.
In the first few frames, I have a button "next_1".
At frame 10, I need to have another button "next_2". I really really need this button to not be on frame one (I could possibly just make it invisible, but that's going to create a clickable area that I don't want).
The problem is, anything I don't put on "frame_1" renders as null in my Document class.
Is there any solution to this? I would rather not have to write my script on the timeline if possible (it seems easier in the long run to keep it in a document class)...
Items on the timeline are created on the fly, so if the playhead has not reached frame 10, next_2 is not created.
Easiest Document-class solution:
Create an array of frame labels like ["label1", "label2"]
Create sectionIndex var and set it to 0
Create a next button on its own layer so it is always showing.
When the next button is clicked, increment sectionIndex, then gotoAndPlay(myLabels[sectionIndex])
Okay, directly lifted from "Real World Flash Game Development":
/**************************************************
* FRAME LABELS *
**************************************************/
private function enumerateFrameLabels():void {
for each (var label:FrameLabel in currentLabels) {
addFrameScript(label.frame-1, dispatchFrameEvent);
}
}
private function dispatchFrameEvent():void {
dispatchEvent(new Event(currentLabel, true));
}
This dispatches an event at each frame label on the timeline.
Then you can just add event listeners for each frame:
addEventListener("name_of_my_framelabel", frameHandler);
addEventListener("another_framelabel", frameHandler);
And write a switch statement to add event listeners for the buttons when they actually show up on the timeline.
private function frameHandler(e:Event):void {
switch(e.type) {
case 'screen_2':
stop();
next_2.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, click2, false, 0, true)
break;
}
}