Action Script 2 Suggestion - actionscript-3

Question

I am doing a project which is about interacting, mouse on screen, Hence, I want to do it by using Adobe Flash Pro and Action Script2.
here is the Task:
- a simple animations (for example: that full of spiders walking/jumping from up to down on the screen)
- once the mouse moves, the animation will Reverse (all spiders animation will reverse back and hide back to the top of screen from the place that the came).
- if the mouse doesn't move after 60 Seconds the animation will happen again till the mouse move again on the screen (Those spiders animation will happen again).
i have created a Animation Spider "Movie clip" (spider animation going down)
1- what script i should write to make animation reverse?
2- how can i tell Adobe my mouse is moved or it's not moving, so the spiders animation will happen or reverse?
by the way, I am a very beginner in action script 2.0
i appreciate any suggestion and help *is fine for me to do it in action script 3 too
Thanks.

Answer 1

Oh my. AS2 :)
OK first off I think it would be easier if you would create 2 different animations. One for the Spider to walk down. The other one to walk up. It is possible to reverse a MovieClip but I think if you`re a beginner, stick with the basics.
You need 3 thinks here.
1) Spider Clips. Going down and up.
2) An interval (timer in AS3)
var interval:Number = setInterval(spidersComeOut, 60 * 1000);
3) Mouse move listener
root.onMouseMove = function()
{
//swap your spider clips
//move the spider up again
//reset the interval with clearInterval(interval) and restart it again.
}
This is a very basic handler for mouse move.
Hope this will help you a little bit. This is not a complete solution. It will not work out of the box.
One thing at the end. If you are new to AS2 I would recomend to give as3 a shot. It is more difficult to start with, but there are more people out there willing to help with an AS3 problem then with as2.

Answer 2

Since you said you were ready to use AS3 here is solution.
I assume you have a separate movie clip containing your spiders animation which you place on the main timeline/stage.
1.place your MovieClip on the stage and give it the instance name of 'spiders'.
2.inside this MovieClip, on the first frame put this code (it will handle revesing the animation)
import flash.events.Event;
stop();
var _dir:int = 1;
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEF);
function onEF(e:Event):void
{
getNextAnimationFrame();
}
function getNextAnimationFrame():void
{
var frameNum:int = currentFrame + _dir;
if (frameNum < 1 || frameNum > totalFrames)
{
removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEF);
}
frameNum = Math.max(1, Math.min(totalFrames,frameNum));
gotoAndStop(frameNum);
}
function changeDirection($dir:int):void
{
_dir = $dir;
removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEF);
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onEF);
}
3.on the main timeline (in the first frame) put this code:
import flash.utils.Timer;
import flash.events.TimerEvent;
import flash.events.MouseEvent;
var timer:Timer = new Timer(60 * 1000, 1);
timer.start();
timer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER_COMPLETE, onTime);
stage.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_MOVE, onMove);
function onTime(e:TimerEvent):void
{
trace("it's time");
spiders.changeDirection(1);
}
function onMove(e:MouseEvent):void
{
timer.reset();
timer.start();
spiders.changeDirection(-1);
}
It would be possible to handle mouse, timer and animation in one piece of code, however the way it's build now is kind of OOP, if at some point you decided to build it properly it would be extremely easy to 'rewrite' this code as separate classes.