Is posible something like this: in frame1 I have some user interaction (drag drop graphics etc), when user click some button I open frame2 or frame3 where are fields for taking some input from user, then when user finish, I back him to frame1 but frame is not "reset"? I tried what described here, and I can even send data from frame 2 to frame 1 using global vars, but frame 1 is "reset" all user actions are clean, so is there a way in this situation to keep frame1 in memory or something?
Previous or next go to a frame if the frame is being initialized is natural. There's no way to save it. In other words, move the frame is The following concepts, removeChild(previous-stage), addChild(next-stage)
In my experience, the script code to control the frame, increasing complexity are highly undesirable. Maintenance is difficult and in the future, the readability of the code is very poor. Recommend to handle than that in a single frame. Something like a single frame of the object location, size, status, and stored as a variable because it can restore it, it's more reasonable to think that.
If you are working with Flash & AS3 together you can put the code:
gotoAndStop(3); // 3 is the number of the frame
If you are using:
gotoAndPlay(3); // it will begin to play the frames from 3 till the timeline finds a stop mark.
So, you'll need to put a stop on the frame you want.
e.g. stop();
check out this tutorial: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9N9vE7wjoc4
Related
I have a Movieclip (level 1, MC) with around 10 frames. There is a different movieclip (level 2, Move Jump etc animation) on each frame. Inside each of the level 2 movieclips, there are about 30 movieclip symbols (level 3, Head Arm etc) each spamming about 100 frames with around 30-50 keyframes. Each level 3 symbol has around 10 frames, on each frame I have a particular skin graphic.
I have all the level 2 and level 3 symbols instance named (same label across timeline for the same object), and I have the right frames stop(); and labelled. I also understand that everytime I enter a new frame in not just level 1 but also level 2, I have to reset all the level 3 symbols to the desired frame, because my previous settings will be destroyed upon leaving frame.
I got it working by doing level1.gotoAndStop(level2name) ---> level1.level2.level3.gotoAndStop(skintype) and then loop over a nasty nasty number of poses X bodyparts. AND this process needs to be performed in an ENTER_FRAME event since everything will be reset again. Needless to say, I really really don't want to do it this way.
One of the alternatives is breaking the graphics up and have many many level 2 poses movieclips inside my level 1 MC movieclip (mage hit by warrior 3rd attack, warrior hit by rogue 4th attack...). That's what I used to do before. But for this project, a simple calculation tells me I need to make 200+ animations that way, which is not feasible. I can also get rid of level 1 MC and have the poses saved into an array, but the bodyparts still need to be refreshed every frame.
I'm hoping that there's a relatively quick fix to this that I managed to miss, as it seems like such a basic feature, I'm sure many flash games will have to go through it (dress up, or anything with customization + animation really). Yet somehow I've been searching for days and can't find a cure. The author-time ability to simply swap out graphics within a symbol to replace every frame of every animation in the entire file also suggests that there's gotta be a more universal approach to these swapping. I hope you can prove me right!
I do have 2 things that I don't know if I should even bother trying: 1) Drag the MC onto frame1 (my only frame), where I currently have nothing but code. 2) Declare each bodypart individually AND declare MC, then have MC's parts link to these bodyparts. Basically, I just need a viable method to keep these bodyparts from resetting everytime the animation goes to a new frame, my flash knowledge is not enough to tell me whether if it's even possible to have these "global graphics bank independent of frames".
And yes I know I'm probably not doing it in the most clean way possible, but I simply animate better with visuals, so while I CAN start from shapes and animate everything using strictly code I REALLY want to move away from it. The art style is pretty important in this project.
UPDATE: For now, I went for the ugly route. Everytime the MC changes animation, I do:
MovieClip(DisplayObjectContainer(MC.getChildByName(MC.move))).Hand.gotoAndStop(MC.skinname);
And repeat that for all 35 body parts. Turns out that flash replaces all frames of hand in the MC.move, which makes life a lot easier. The alternative is to poll for every single frame, but the direct consequence is MUCH slower fps. Instead, right now I only need to switch graphics whenever there is a change to the moves.
This works, but I'm aware that it slows down performance quite a bit. In fact it can slow down performance in the same magnitude as the actual vector rendering. Limiting the swapping to only move changes is really not optional but mandatory.
Please look at this: http://zdg.ru/tmp/animation.swf
The source can be downloaded here: http://zdg.ru/tmp/animation.fla
If I got your description correct, I did the animation in the same way. The main timeline has a single frame with a character symbol. A character symbol has a timeline within it with two animation points "stand" and "jump". The character consists of symbols "head", "body", "left_hand", "right_hand", "left_leg", "right_leg". Each of these symbols is animated independently. Charater animation timeline contains both keyframes and tweens. All symbols are named consistently in all frames.
Each character part, in turn, has a timeline of 2 frames, corresponding to skin 1 and skin 2.
As you can see, the skin is not destroyed during the animation and there is no need to correct it in every frame.
The code on the main timeline is:
var char_body_parts:Array = new Array(
mv_char.body, mv_char.head, mv_char.left_hand, mv_char.right_hand,
mv_char.left_leg, mv_char.right_leg
);
var skin_num:int = 1;
mv_char.gotoAndStop("stand");
setSkin(char_body_parts, skin_num);
btn_jump.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, doJump);
btn_skin.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, doSkin);
function doJump(evt:MouseEvent):void {
mv_char.gotoAndPlay("jump");
}
function doSkin(evt:MouseEvent):void {
skin_num++;
if (skin_num > 2) skin_num = 1;
setSkin(char_body_parts, skin_num);
}
function setSkin(parts:Array, skin_num:int):void {
for (var i:int = 0; i < parts.length; i++) {
(parts[i] as MovieClip).gotoAndStop(skin_num);
}
}
================== UPDATE ====================
This is the updated animation: http://zdg.ru/tmp/animation3.swf
The source can be downloaded here: http://zdg.ru/tmp/animation3.fla
Now my setup is identical to yours.
I have a 2-frame char, one frame contains "stand" movieclip and the other frame contains "jump" movieclip.
Indeed, when you gotoAndStop for any of animations, skins get lost. But you don't have to update them every frame. You need to update them only in the first frame of animation, i.e. right after gotoAndStop("animation"). I still have a list of body parts to bulk assign the skin but now they are accessed by name. So the main code changes are:
var char_body_parts:Array = new Array(
"body", "head", "left_hand", "right_hand",
"left_leg", "right_leg"
);
function setSkin(char:MovieClip, parts:Array, skin_num:int):void {
for (var i:int = 0; i < parts.length; i++) {
char.mv_animation.getChildByName(parts[i]).gotoAndStop(skin_num);
}
}
function setAnimation(char:MovieClip, anim_name:String):void {
char.gotoAndStop(anim_name);
setSkin(char, char_body_parts, skin_num);
}
There are also two more solutions, I didn't code them but they are easily described.
In frame 1 of each skin movieclip, add gotoAndStop((root as MovieClip).skin_num). It works as follows: whenever a skin gets reset, it starts from frame 1. In frame 1 it will gotoAndStop to the current skin automatically. So you dont need to do anything else.
Put your animation movieclips not in the timeline, but in the same single frame. Name each animation lke "stand", "jump" etc. Switch animations not by gotoAndStop, but by making selected animation visible and others invisible. The skin would have to be set once for each skin change.
I'm new to actionscript 3, I have sequences of frames and two buttons to control which sequence to play, it first works properly, but have problem when a sequence is being played for the second time. I have used gotoAndPlay function for my navigation. can anyone help me?
From your description I have a hunch about what may be happening...
Firstly I would ask you if the buttons are present at all frames along the timeline? If they are not (ie, sometimes the timeline shows a frame where the buttons are not present before returning to them ) you should realise that when they come back into view again, they are not the same buttons as the ones from before. That means that the event listeners you attached the first time are not going to respond to clicks on these new buttons.
This happens because flash always totally recreates timeline objects when they come into view again. Flash can sometimes cope with a "jump" over a "gap" when a symbol is the same, but this is extremely unreliable and should be avoided for this reason.
You can avoid this problem by keeping the ui on the stage at all times, and revealing and hiding the buttons when you need them. Even better, create an instance of your ui in code and add it to the stage when you need it. This way you know there is only one instance, and you are in control of it.
I am working with Flash CS5, and haven't been using Flash since the age of AS2.
I have a movieclip symbol in which I have an Actions layer, in which I have a keyframe in frame 1 and one in frame 20. Each of these should have a stop(); action assigned, but when i select the one in frame 20 and start writing, the little "a" appears on frame 1 of another layer. When I make a keyframe in frame 20 of that layer and try to assign actions it yields the same result. They appear on frame 1.
Is this a bug or am I missing some vital information about AS3?
AS3 is in fact more picky (for good reason) about how the code is implemented.
You need to select the keyframe you are intending to put code into, and then use your actions window. And as Markus commented, make sure you're using keyframes, and not empty frames. If you try to write code into an empty frame, it will default it to the most recent keyframe.
Furthermore, If you have multiple layers and say, your code is on layer2 and your objects on layer1, if you have keyframes on layer1, and intend to enter code at frame 20, but your layer selection is layer2, it will yield the same result described above. You'll have to make sure the correct layer is active. The actions window will only display the code from the current layer's most recent keyframe.
Hope that clears some things up!
I am making a fighting game in Flash and while I have everything running, I am missing something: a victory/loss screen. Logically, I know how to do it:
if character.hp < 0
{
character.dead = true;
dispatchevent("death", event)
}
My problem is that I have no idea as to how to code it. I know I will use two classes and my two .fla files (unless I am wrong).
I have two .fla files that are in play here: the Menu.fla file and the Arena.fla file. Menu.fla contains the entire navigation of the game, options, character selection screens, etc. and when it is time for the player to engage in battle, it loads the Arena.fla file, which contains only the backgrounds (depending on the selected stage) and for now is set to a length of one frame only. For Arena.fla, the real action happens in my classes, but logically, I would only need HP.as and Character.as.
In Character.as, I have declared the following variable:
var isDead:Boolean = false; //is character dead?
In HP.as, believe I should have the following:
if(currentHp<0)
{
currentHp = 0;
character.isDead = true; //declared as var `character:Object;`
EventDispatcher.dispatchEventListener("playerDead", playerDead);
}
And finally, in Arena.fla, I want to be able to detect the above-mentioned eventlistener and simply move on to a second frame which will display a message in the style of "PLAYER ONE HAS WON" or "PLAYER ONE HAS LOST" with a button that will allow me to go back to the character selection screen. This is the first part in which I am stuck: how do I detect the dispatched event listener in my main .fla file?
Secondly, if the player clicks on the "CONTINUE" button, which displays regardless if the player has won or lost, how can my Menu.fla (which loads the Arena.swf) detect this click event, unload the game, and go back to the character selection screen?
Thank you in advance for helping me out. I realize this is a lot of text but it's the most descriptive I can be. If you have any questions or need any clarification concerning my question, feel free to speak up.
-Christopher
I'm not sure about the code you have to read the HP but do you know that character.dead is actually becoming true?
You could always have the Arena.swf call a function in the HP.as that will end the game and declare a winner.You could add a second Frame to Arena.swf that contains a dimmed background and a WINNER or LOSER text.'
In general, the easiest way for a user-defined class to gain event dispatching capabilities is to extend EventDispatcher. If this is impossible (that is, if the class is already extending another class), you can instead implement the IEventDispatcher interface, create an EventDispatcher member, and write simple hooks to route calls into the aggregated EventDispatcher.
activate
Dispatched when Flash Player or an AIR application gains operating system focus and becomes active.
deactivate
Dispatched when Flash Player or an AIR application loses operating system focus and is becoming inactive.
Event dispatcher
Thank you all for your help, but I have figured it out. Turns out my method was far too complicated for what I wanted to do, and for the time I had left. I will explain how I did it.
Instead of using an EventDispatcher like I thought I would, I used a SharedObject, which simply made everything work like magic.
A SharedObject can be accessed from anywhere in the application/game, as long as it is referred to it correctly. So I simply created a SharedObject called "winLossData" set to "NO WINNERS" in my character selection screen. This cookie is never saved nor written to the disk, so there's no chance for the user to find it (generally speaking).
I have decided to use the Movement.as class which contains all of my controls and wrote an event listener of type Event.ENTER_FRAME that checks constantly my characters' health status. If one of them is below 100, my SharedObject immediately takes for value either "PLAYER ONE" or "PLAYER TWO", depending on who won (i.e. whose health points are not under 100). Afterward, just for precaution, I reset the losing character's health points to 100. Here's the code:
function whoWon(event:Event):void
{
if(playerSpriteBar.getPower() <= 0)
{
winner.data.winner = "Player Two";
playerSpriteBar.update(100);
}
if(playerAIBar.getPower() <= 0)
{
winner.data.winner = "Player One";
playerAIBar.update(100);
}
}
In my Menu.fla, I have another event listener of type Event.ENTER_FRAME that waits for the cookie to change value. As soon as the cookie changes values, Menu.fla automatically unloads the external swf (in our case, Arena.swf) and displays the results, accordingly to the received SharedObject. The rest of the actions happen inside the Menu.fla file, so no need for any extra coding.
Once again, thank you all for your help.
I am using the frames in the timeline of a .swf as pages in a flash app. The user can advance to the next page by clicking a button that takes her to the next frame. Similarly, it is possible to navigate to the previous frame/page as well.
Most of the content is placed on the stage (i.e. created by dragging an instance of a library symbol to the stage) but properties of those instances, such as .visible might be changed via actionscript. Also, some objects are loaded from external flash files and displayed programmatically with addChild / addChildAt.
The problem is, if I am on Frame N+1 and there is an object displayed on the stage programmatically (i.e. with addChild, not by having it placed on the stage) and navigate to Frame N where there is an object that is placed on the stage (i.e. dragged from the library),
then the instance of that object is undefined/null and throws an error if I try to set its properties (like .visible).
The error does not occur if I am moving to the NEXT frame, only if I am moving to the PREVIOUS one. Therefore I assume that some kind of initialization is not getting called while going one frame back.
I was also thinking that the objects would just not "live" to the next timeframe, that is, their value would be lost and re-initialized because of scope, but if there is no dynamically created object on the stage, I can navigate back and forth just fine.
Is there a way to ensure that the objects created on the stage do not disappear while navigating back to the previous frame?
The first, and more useful, part of the answer is this: timeline keyframes and scripts can give conflicting information about display objects - whether they should exist, where they should be, and so on. For example, when you add an item by playing into its frame, and then delete it with script, and then play into its frame again. When this happens, there's no unambiguously correct thing for Flash to do, so it tends to be unpredictable. I believe what generally happens is that once you fiddle with a given object via script, it's considered to no longer pay attention to the timeline - but your mileage will vary.
Having said that, the reason things are different when you play backwards is the second and more arcane part of the answer. Internally Flash functions differently when seeking forward and backwards on the timeline. Flash internally treats keyframes as changes to be applied in the forward direction, so as you play forward, it applies those changes in sequence. When you move backwards, however, from frame N+X to frame N, it doesn't scan through the intervening X frames reversing those changes - it jumps back to frame 1 and fast-forwards along to frame N. Normally, it amounts to the same thing and you don't need to worry about it, but when you get into the twitchy area where scripts and the timeline have a different idea of what should be on the stage, you're liable to see things behave differently depending on which way you jump (as you are now).
The super-short version is, for things to work predictably, try to ensure that any given object gets added, updated, and removed the same way - either all via script, or all via the timeline. When that seems impossible, fiddle with your content structure - usually, the best solution is to change your object into two nested ones, so that the things you want to do with script occur one level higher or lower than the things you want to do with the timeline.
I'm not sure I got your question right, but as3 does not instantiate elements on the timeline as soon as you gotoAndSomething, but later that frame.
That is, you can't
this.gotoAndPlay(10)
this.elementOnTimelineFrame10.DoSomething()
without errors.
I remember using this chunk of code in the past to work around this problem. It uses the Stage.Invalidate() function to wait for an Event.RENDER before trying to access and children, more info (although vague as hell) is here
private function init():void
{
stage.addEventListener(Event.RENDER, stage_renderHandler);
}
private function stage_renderHandler(evt:Event):void
{
// Run your code here
updateChildren();
}
private function enterFrameHandler(evt:Event):void
{
// triggers the RENDER event
stage.invalidate();
}
This also might me very costly (performance wise). I would strongly advise against dynamically adding/removing objects to an existing timeline, is there any way in which you can place an empty Sprite above the timeline animation and use that for all your dynamic content?
Hope this helps