Inside flash cs6 I have drawn a flash movieclip in which I set export settings as abc.Gameboard. Inside gameboard I have a bunch of pieces (symbol:Piece) which I export as abc.Piece - both base class set to MovieClip and with class files. The piece has frame labels like hit, over etc.. My problem is accessing the pieces in code so I can eg. gotoAndPlay("mine") - at the moment the event only fires once which is the last piece on the board.
I can set the frame action on this last piece but would like to figure out how to do same for each piece.
I add a gameboard to the stage like so
var gb:Gameboard = new Gameboard();
gb.name = "gb001";
contextView.addChild(gb);
Then
contextView.addEventListener(Event.ADDED, thingAdded);
private function thingAdded(event:Event):void
{
var type:String = event.target.toString();
switch(type)
{
// this runs only once - i want it to run for each piece that is inside the symbol
case "[object Piece]":
var p:MovieClip = event.target as Piece;
p.gotoAndPlay("mine");
break;
}
}
or if there's a better way that would be great.. this looks pretty clunky
Edit: Bit more info about how I'm trying to build the gameboard
Draw a collection of shapes in illustrator - mask it (Gameboard region). Import into Flash as Graphic. Convert graphic to several movie clip symbols (So JSFL can drill down and access masked pieces) - run JSFL script & create 00's of pieces. Then I set export settings on Piece and Gameboard and add Gameboard to the contextView.
I actually wrote an entire article about this once. The ADDED event should fire once for every DisplayObject that gets added. Are you sure that you're not using ADDED_TO_STAGE, which does not bubble? If you're using ADDED_TO_STAGE, then you need to set the useCapture flag to true to get it to fire for all children.
If you want to involve RobotLegs in the process, probably the better way is to simply create a "marker" Class for each specific button that you want to have behave in a different way, then register a mediator for each Class that will manage the behvior. Robotlegs already has the hooks built in to listen for ADDED_TO_STAGE and do this.
However, you could also consider using the Flash IDE for what it's for, which is putting stuff on stage. In that case, your GameBoard instance will be ready in the constructor of your main document Class for you to do whatever you want with it.
MPO is that logic that is outside Gameboard shouldn't know or care how it works internally, and honestly it probably shouldn't even be GameBoard's responsibility to handle simple stuff like button over states and things. That should be up to the button itself. If the buttons don't need to toggle or anything beyond what SimpleButton handles, you can just declare the button instances as Button in the library instead of MovieClip and get all that stuff for free instead of coding it yourself.
Part of being a good coder is in being able to figure out ways not to code everything.
in their Gameboard inside Piece? I want know exactly your Gameboard Structure.
If you're right. try this:
function thingAdded(e:Event):void
{
if(!e.target is Gameboard) return;
var mc:Gameboard = Gameboard(e.target);
var i:int = 0;
while(i<mc.numChildren)
{
if( mc.getChildAt(i) is Piece)
{
var piece:Piece = Piece(mc.getChildAt(i));
piece.gotoAndStop(2);
}
i++;
}
}
Here is my Sample code: Gameboard
Related
Complete AS3 noob here - I've tried Googling this, but I can't seem to find what I'm looking for (I stumbled across this, http://ub4.underblob.com/as3-naming-elements-dynamically/, but it doesn't weem to work for me).
I'm trying to dynamically add a Movieclip inside another Movieclip through an external AS3 class
Something like this:
var bullet:Bullet = new Bullet(x, y, "right");
var stageBackground:MovieClip = (stage.getChildByName("back") as MovieClip);
stageBackground.addChild(bullet);
However, while this compiles correctly, at run time, I get error #1009 - Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
The debug panel tells me the problem is with this line:
stageBackground.addChild(bullet);
But I can't seem to figure out what's wrong with it. I've tried recasting stageBackground as a Sprite, but that didn't change anything. I know the MovieClip back exists - when I reference it through near identical code in my document class, it works perfectly.
You are accessing stage here to find your container, which is very likely the problem.
You are probably thinking that the stage property refers to "the stage" in Adobe Flash authoring environment.
That's not true.
If you placed a MovieClip on "the stage" in the Flash IDE, it ends up on the main time line, this however, is not the thing the stage property is referencing. stage is the topmost DisplayObjectContainer in the display list. It only exists at runtime. It more or less represents the FlashPlayer window, the runtime environment that executes your .swf file.
In short: you are simply looking for your back MovieClip in the wrong place.
The property of a container that represents the main timeline is root.
Do not use root either.
As you can see, your code becomes dependent on the display list
structure of your application. You are already struggling to find the
container that you are looking for. If you change the structure, your code breaks. Even changing the name of the container (for example to something like "background") will wreak havoc.
Instead, use Events.
You are in another class and you want to fire a bullet.
So you create that bullet same as you do now:
var bullet:Bullet = new Bullet(x, y, "right");
Next, dispatch an Event to notify the rest of your code that a bullet was created and it should be placed in the appropriate container:
dispatchEvent(new BulletEvent(BulletEvent.CREATED, bullet));
(Create a custom event class BulletEvent that extends Event, with the apropriate setter and getter for a Bullet object)
Register a listener on the object of your class that creates the bullets, you will catch this event and place the bullet in the container:
var object:YourClass = new YourClass();
object.addEventListener(BulletEvent.CREATED, addBulletToContainer);
function addBulletToContainer(e:BulletEvent):void
{
// adding the bullet to the container
back.addChild(e.bullet);
}
This code would be placed in the parent of your back MovieClip.
The Flash IDE automatically creates variables behind the scenes that have the same names as the instance names. That's why the variable back is available here.
Using events here allows you to literally fire the bullet into your code with somebody else taking care of it, where it's easy to figure out the container it belongs into.
I recently picked up Emanuele Feronato's Flash Game Development by Example to try and help expand my knowledge of game design and actionscript 3, and I'm stuck on the first chapter where we're building basically a memory match two game where you have ten sets of tiles and you try and match them up by clicking on them.
In the code I'm stuck on, Mr. Feronato is adding the tiles to the stage using a for loop and addChild, here's the code in particular:
// tile placing loop
for (i:uint=0; i<NUMBER_OF_TILES; i++) {
tile = new tile_movieclip();
addChild(tile);
tile.cardType=tiles[i];
tile.x=5+(tile.width+5)*(i%TILES_PER_ROW);
tile.y=5+(tile.height+5)*(Math.floor(i/TILES_PER_ROW));
tile.gotoAndStop(NUMBER_OF_TILES/2+1);
tile.buttonMode = true;
tile.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,onTileClicked);
}
// end of tile placing loop
In the 5th line, you can see that he creates a custom property of the tile variable called "cardType," but when I try and run the code I get the error "Access of possibly undefined property cardType through a reference with static type Tile." I have the class Tile extending MovieClip, and the main class extends Sprite, but as far as I can tell I've written the code exactly as in the book and can't get past this. I thought about just using a normal int variable cardType to hold tiles[i] but later on you use the cardType property on a mouse event so I'm a little stuck.
Has something changed in Flash that no longer allows you to create custom properties in this way? Or did I just do something stupid that I'm not catching.
As always, thank you so much for the help.
ActionScript supports dynamic classes, in which properties may be added during runtime. Without the dynamic keyword, a class is sealed, meaning its properties may not be altered.
MovieClip is an example of a dynamic class.
Instantiating a MovieClip from code (or MovieClip instance created in Flash Professional), adding this property would be supported:
var tile:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
tile.cardType = "custom value";
However from code, even if extending MovieClip you must add the dynamic keyword:
package {
import flash.display.MovieClip;
public dynamic class Tile extends MovieClip {
/* ... */
}
}
Now, you may add properties to your Tile instance:
var tile:Tile = new Tile();
tile.cardType = "custom value";
and i am having problem, switching from Timeline code to OOP/Document Class. I managed to build the Fla with AS3 on timeline with no problem. But totally clueless when on OOP.
I had been told that Scenes are no good and i should stick to saving my scenes as Movieclips.
My situation is as such:
I have 8 pages of PSD files, and i imported each PSD into Flash Pro, and each PSD has a few buttons and textinput. First page is Login page, second page is register page etc.
My questions are:
1.) How should i save the PSD? Do i save them as nested Animation,(Giving each item on PSD a symbol? Buttons and textinput?) Then saving that PSD as 1 movieclip(Nested Animation?)
I already tried importing the PSD with Flash Layers onto Stage,then giving each buttons and Textinput their Properties then savin them as Nested Animation, but do i call that Movieclip from the Class document? Or do i link All Movieclips in the Document Class(Main.as)?
2.) How do i access the Movieclip from Class file, I tried var login:Login = New Login, then addChild(login). That adds the movieclip but none of the functionality works, and errors saying Access of Undefined Properties for every single button's Name.
3.) And if 1 button is clicked and that links to another page(PSD) do i do the Below?
h.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, fl_ClickToGohome);
function fl_ClickToGohome(event:MouseEvent):void
{
gotoAndStop("register.as");
Thanks for your time
Programming in .as files apart from the timeline isn't too different. If you're using the document class (found in Actionscript Settings panel), you may be feeling the abrupt change in class specific programming a bit too daunting. For a smoother transition, you can simply dump your current timeline code into a new code.as file (as-is), and simply drop the following line in your timeline:
include "code.as";
This effectively just copy/pastes the code and runs it, except now you can use a proper code editor (such as Sublime Text). Furthermore, as it's not a new class, the code you write there has the same scope as your timeline.
2). Functions only have access to the namespace their created in (this is probably why your document class was throwing "Access of Undefined Properties" errors). You can always pass a reference to an object (and by extension, its namespace) through function arguments.
1). To answer your first question, you can create your movieclips, and nest them as deeply as your want, in any order you want. The important thing is to be aware of how to navigate to that object. Take for example the following stage heiarchy:
root:MainTimeline ¬
0: PSD_one:MovieClip ¬
0: backgroundImage:Bitmap
1: button:Sprite
2: txt:TextField
1: PSD_two:MovieClip
2: PSD_three:MovieClip
The timeline has 3 objects, each with a zero-based index. The first PSD is a MovieClip DisplayObjectContainer with 3 child elements, each with name properties that we can use to address the objects. In Flash IDE we label these "instances", and they automatically become properties on the parent object due to internal magic the IDE has enabled in the Actionscript Settings panel labeled "Automatically declare stage instances".
This means, to change the text on txt, we can write PSD_one.txt.text = "foo". Without this setting, you'll need to use container methods like root.getChildByName("PSD_one").getChildAt(2). Outright calling txt.text = "foo" will never work because there is no property on the current scope called that (ie., this.txt is implied).
3). gotoAndStop is a MovieClip method that controls timeline frames. If you're really going to make a clean break from the old way of doing things, you should drop your use of frames.
There are two ways you could approach displaying these PSDs.
Method 1:
You instance your PSDs on the stage with the Flash IDE and give each one a unique name that you can then reference in your code. Assuming the layout above, you may simply move each PSD offscreen (such as with PSD_two.x = this.loaderInfo.width), and swap them to the center of the screen when you want to "go" to the next "frame".
Method 2:
You've imported your PSDs into your library as you're accustomed to, but do not instance them. Instead, you jump straight into your code and when someone clicks on button h to go to fl_ClickToGohome, your function picks the library object and manually instances it, and parents it to the stage with addChild().
function fl_ClickToGohome(e:MouseEvent):void {
var psd:PSD_one = new PSD_one();
addChild(psd);
}
This sort of approach would be preferable if you're going to start getting into dynamic loading of assets. Of course, rather than having an already created PSD_one class in your library, you'll simply use URLLoader() or Loader(), and you'll want to save out compressed images, not full-blown PSDs.
I hope this helps. I know I haven't answered your questions directly, but sometimes the issue stems from manner of implementation, not specific code.
-Cheers
To answer your questions...
1: Pathing to Objects
If you're not sure what the path is to your objects, try this function. It's a trimmed down version of the one I use in my own work.
function listLayers(obj = null, indent:String = ""):void {
// If no object was provided, start with the MainTimeline
if (obj == null) { obj = root; }
for (var i:int = 0; i < obj.numChildren; i++) {
// Make a pointer to the object at this index
var item = obj.getChildAt(i);
// Get the item type
var type:String = flash.utils.getQualifiedClassName(item);
if (type.lastIndexOf("::") != -1) {type = type.split("::")[1];}
var msg:String = indent + i + ": " + item.name + ":" + type;
if (type != "TLFTextField" && item.hasOwnProperty("numChildren") && item.numChildren > 0) {
trace(msg + " ¬");
listLayers(item, indent + " ");
} else {
trace(msg);
}
}
}
This will print out the structure of your stage in much the same format as you saw above (with the PSDs). You can then use getChildByName from the root to the child (the full path must be provided, much like navigating folders on your hard drive).
2: Public/Private Namespaces
These are only to be used in dedicated classes. If you're using the include method I mentioned, you omit these as you would in your timeline code. They denote whether a property/method is accessible from "the outside" of the class. If you're just starting out, leave everything Public. You can worry about memory optimizations later when you're ready to tackle it.
3: How does the class access the buttons?
The easiest way to think of the DisplayList is as a folder structure.
You might write
C:/Users/Me
Which in the DisplayList would look more like
C.Users.Me
Of course, we don't have a root location called C, and your objects are probably called PSD_one and myButton, so we can rewrite it as follows...
root.PSD_one.myButton
This is assuming you actually have those properties pre-defined on the objects, which does not happen when dynamically creating objects. In those cases, you'd string together your commands, as follows:
root.getChildByName("PSD_one").getChildByName("myButton")
When you write a Class, it's like creating a new computer on your network. There is no direct relationship between that Class and your MainTimeline. You need to connect them.
If you instance a DisplayListObject (such as a Sprite) and add it to the stage, the object automatically gains a few properties like stage, root, and parent which until it was parented were in fact null. These are properties that the class can reference from inside itself to connect to the MainTimeline and access objects on it.
Conversely, if you wanted to you could pass a reference to the stage to the class from the constructor arguments, as follows:
var foo:MySprite = new MySprite(stage);
I am trying to make a card game in Flash using ActionScript 3. I'm not too familiar with the language(grew up with AS2) but I considered it to be more appropriate for this project.
Bad thing about this, though, is that I ran into a problem right away: I'm treating each individual card as a movieclip, but something that I really need is to assign some integer values to the card(It's not really the case, but as an example let's say that I am working on a Poker and I want all Aces to carry the value 1 because they are the best card, 2 for the kings, etc).
I tried looking for it but all I found is how to make arrays of movieclips. I know that this question shouldn't be too hard! Can somebody help me?
(As an aside note, should I really work with movie clips or would buttons be more convenient?)
Firstly, from my point of view, never use components unless you really need to since they take longer time to draw and they're not flexible. I've had so many issues with them in the past (this question I posted being one of those).
About MovieClip's… The MovieClip class is dynamic so you can assign any virtual property to it, no problem. So yourMcInstance.someVar = 3 is perfectly valid.
One of the major changes in AS3, I think, was the introduction of Sprite class, which is basically a MovieClip without a timeline. It is much lighter and unless you're manually creating frame animations it is the class to choose for any container that can handle mouse (and many other) events. However, it is not a dynamic class so yourSpriteInstance.someVar = 3 wouldn't be valid. And that's why using custom classes is encouraged. With custom classes you have the option to extend a class and create custom properties and methods.
because Movieclips are Objects, you can actually attach variables directly to them.
var card:MovieClip = new MovieClip(); //create a blank MC
addchild(card);
card.id = 5; //You can attach vars like this
To add MovieClips to an Array:
const clips:Array = [];
function addNewCardToCardsArray(array:Array, color:String, value:int):MovieClip {
const clip:MovieClip = new MovieClip();
clip.color = color;
clip.value = value;
return array[array.length] = clip;
}
In my main Actionscript file i have a instance of a body class that moves the person body arms legs etc. and a gun class which has methods and properties to do with the person gun.
Right now i have a function in the Main class which is called move gun and looks like this and is called everyframe to move the gun to the bodys arm. I was hoping to move this function to the guns class so i could call it like gun.moveGun(); but the body dosent exist inside the gun variable. so i wonder if i could call the body.getArm(); function from inside the gun. I know i could call the function and pass the bodys arm location to it from the main file. But don't know if this is the best way to do it.
private function moveGun():void
{
gun.x = body.getArm('left').x;
gun.y = body.getArm('left').y;
}
It seems like keeping the gun related functions inside the gun class is the best way to organise everything but i dont know how to do this.
Also depending what button someone clicks at the start the person will either have a basketBall or gun in there hand. Ive added the swf online at Here so you can see how it works. i just wanna change how its organised because the main file is very full and though i should learn how to organise things better. There are lots of other part of the program that would be organised better if i knew how to get the object to interact or what is the best way to do it. Starting to think passing the x,y coordinates to the moveGun function inside the gun Class is the best way. If so just tell me please and ill do that.
From the code you posted, I think you need to move the gun with every frame to stick to the player's arm.
The answer you're looking for is Composition, since every person gets one and only one gun, I think you better put a reference (variable) in the person class for its gun.
and here is your player (person) class:
class Person
{
private var m_gun:Gun;
public function Person()
{
this.m_gun = new Gun();
}
// a function which is called each frame
private function updateFrame()
{
// Here you can provide your own logic in Gun class
this.m_gun.doSomething();
}
}
generally, you want to communicate between classes using the built-in event listener and dispatcher system. if 'something' happens - regardless of 'where' that occurs - dispatch an event. whenever something should react, it should have a listener.
for example, from the main class you mentioned, you might want to dispatch an event:
private function moveGun():void
{
var e:Event = new Event('moveGun', true);
dispatchEvent(e);
}
then the appropriate instance (the body? - not sure how you have things set up) listen for that:
body.addEventListener('moveGun', moveGunHandler, false, 0, true);
function moveGunHandler(event:Event):void{
gun.x = body.getArm('left').x;
gun.y = body.getArm('left').y;
}
the above is obviously psuedo-code since i have no way of knowing how your display list is set up. also, i used simple string literal event types - best practice would probably be to use custom event classes with event types defined as static constants.