I want to know how(and what scripts) to take words from a text input box and cause it to display and image Ex: if the text box said "smiley face" in it, then the image "smiley_face.jpg" would display on a certain movieclip and can be dragged around the stage and when a new image is loaded, it doesn't replace the previous image on the movie clip.
You need to listen for the textInput event and you need to constantly search for "smile" using something like the search() function(u can use strings or regular expressions).
It returns -1 if the string you're searching for wasn't found, otherwise it returns the first index where the searched string was found.
Here's a really basic example:
var ti:TextField = new TextField();
ti.type = TextFieldType.INPUT;
ti.border = true;
addChild(ti);
ti.addEventListener(TextEvent.TEXT_INPUT, onInput);
function onInput(event:TextEvent):void {
if(ti.text.search('smile')!=-1) trace('display smiley image');
}
You did mention smileys, so depending on your level of comfort with actionscript 3, it might be also worth having a look at Thibault Imbert's SmileyRenderer. Careful it uses the new FTE so you need to use Flash Player 10, etc.
yeah. In ActionScript you need to add a listener event to the text field. then you can do something like this. My action script is not so good so I will just stick with logic.
if listener.text == "smile"
smile.jpg
else if listener.text == "frown"
frown.jpg
else
default.jpg
end
You should check out lynda.com for their basic AS screencasts
Related
I want to receive separate click events from separate lines in a text field, and every time a certain line is clicked by the user, I would like to highlight it and have an event happen.
I would ideally like this to happen with dynamic text, and not have to break the text apart by hand. Using the htmlText property is an option, but I am unsure as to how to bind clickEvents to separate elements.
Where do I begin?
There is no ready to use solution for this. But you can make it yourself using a few things:
set CLICK listener for the whole text field
listen for click and check the caretIndex property
use getLineIndexOfChar to check what's the line of the current caret position
use getLineOffset and getLineLength to get the position of the first and last character of that line
use setSelection to highlight this line
There might be some faster and easier way, but this is what works for sure :)
EDIT: decided to post the solution code, as I was wondering how exactly it works.. and it would be a shame to just leave it unpublished and make you do it instead :)
field.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onTfClicked);
function onTfClicked(e:MouseEvent):void {
trace (field.caretIndex);
var line:uint = field.getLineIndexOfChar(field.caretIndex);
var start:uint = field.getLineOffset(line);
var end:uint = start + field.getLineLength(line);
field.setSelection(start, end);
}
So I've spent an embarrassing number of hours trying to save myself a few minutes and make my code a bit neater, and Google has produced nothing, so now I come crawling to stackoverflow. The problem is with square bracket notation + library items:
So let's say you have a MovieClip called "myMC_5", and you want to set its X position to 0..
myMC_5.x = 0;
..and if you don't want to hard-code the name of the MC but instead you want one line of code to move a specific MovieClip based on a variable, you could do something like this:
var selectMC = 5;
root["myMC_"+selectMC]x = 0;
..and this will have the exact same effect as myMC_5.x = 0, except that this time you must specify the location ("root" or "this" or something).
THE PROBLEM:
I'm working on a game in which the graphic for the background is loaded from the library, and it's different for each level. The initial loading of the vector from the library looks like this:
private var land:vector_land0 = new vector_land0();
..and this works fine, but it only loads that one specific vector. There should be about 30 or more. I'd like to just have 1 line of code in the constructor to load any of them, based on a variable which keeps track of the current level, like this:
private var land:["vector_land"+theLevel] = new ["vector_land"+theLevel]();
..but that doesn't work. I get syntax errors ("expecting identifier before leftbracket") because you need to specify the location of the object, like in the first example:
root["myMC_"+"whatever"].x = 0;
..but this library item has no "location". So, how the heck do I dynamically load a vector from the library? It's not "on the root", or anywhere else. It has no location. I refuse to believe that the standard method for accomplishing this is to create 30 different classes or write a giant block of code with 30 "if" statements, but searching Google has found nothing. :(
It sounds like you're looking for getDefinitionByName(), which you could use to do something like this:
import flash.utils.getDefinitionByName;
private var LevelVectorClass:Class = getDefinitionByName("vector_land" + theLevel) as Class;
private var land:Object = new LevelVectorClass();
This is a horrible way to solve the situation, I don't recommend using square brackets anywhere but arrays. I recommend you putting the "lands" into a LandContainer MovieClip, each frame of that MovieClip would container 1 graphic. It is much cleaner, and you could create constants to store the "identity" of the frames.Example:
var land:LandContainer = new LandContainer();
land.gotoAndStop(FIRST_LEVEL); //FIRST_LEVEL is a constant integer
You can even reuse this LandContainer instance because you can set it's visibility, remove from the display list, set it's frame to the next level without creating another instance. On second thought, I would write a wrapper for this class. Aka link it to your own class which extends the MovieClip class and create custom functions, fields... etc..
This dynamic thing is horrible, hard to maintain, and not efficient at all. Don't know why did not they delete it from AS3... they should have.
Confusing title, my bad.
Basically, I have a list of names. Looping through, I add a MovieClip, Set 2 properties to it, the name, and an ID. The MovieClip is at the same time made to function as a button and I add 4 listeners, mouse up, over, down, or out. I do this with every name. The function each one is set to is the same.
EX: enemyButton[i].addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, mouseUpHandler);
The enemyID turns up "not valid property," time to time when I click, it doesn't crash at all, but sometimes I have to hit the button a few times.
I have narrowed the problem down to having to be caused by the listeners.
The function as simple as:
EX: function mouseUpHandler(e:MouseEvent):void { enemySelected(e.target.enemyID); }
My question is, is too many listeners likely to be the problem? and how can I reduce them?
Here's a snippet of the loop:
var C:Class = Class(getDefinitionByName(enemies[i]));
var c:* = new C();
c.gotoAndStop(1);
enemyButton[i].enemyID = i;
c.name = "select" + i;
c.enemyID = i;
trace(c.enemyID);
enemyButton[i].addChild(c);
enemyScroll.addChild(enemyButton[i]);
enemyButton[i].enemyName.text = info[i][Const.NAME];
enemyButton[i].setChildIndex(enemyButton[i].getChildByName("enemyName"), enemyButton[i].numChildren-1);
Thanks.
If enemyButton is a MovieClip (created via attachMovie, maybe) and not strongly typed as a EnemyButton class, then the ID property becomes dynamic. In this situation, if your list of names contains incorrect data (missing ID field, maybe), then the ID property will remain undefined on some instances of the MovieClip.
You can check the list of data used to generate movie clips. You can run into the same error if you have blank lines in your data.
This has nothing to do with event listeners.
So you just want to generate a bunch of buttons with unique properties and know what button was clicked last. Generally it is very bad idea to implement button logic outside button object. Why? Because you work with object oriented language. Good news is that you work with as3 and it treats functions as objects, so you can assign function to var like this:
var callback:Function = function(name:String, enemyId:int){ /*do something*/ }
And.. you can pass function as a parameter to another function
function setCalback(func:Function){}
button.setCallback(callback);
So, what you really need is to create your own button class, add listeners inside it, add handlers(static handlers will reduce memory usage) and pass callback function to it, that will be called when user clicks button.
Don't mean to spam this much but this was easily fixed, though the responses might have been a better method.
I just had to change target to the currentTarget, that then allowed clicking anywhere on the "button" to work. Whereas before the target varied from childs added to it.
So, solved.
Thanks for the help.
Current my code is as such
setcustomlocation.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK,customlocation2);
function customlocation2(e:MouseEvent):void
{
locationinput.text = FlashingWon.Won1.name.text;
}
I'm trying to make it such that it would copy the input text field values into a dynamic text. However, it throws up the error that
TypeError: Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
at main/customlocation2()[main::frame1:9]
Which can I only assume that it is not able to communicate with the dynamic text field in the movieclip within another movieclip.
First, you can be 100% sure that it CAN communicate with the dynamic TextField in the MovieClip.
From you description I understand that you wish to copy from input into dynamic. But from your code I see that you take from the dynamic into the input, please check that out:
// This will copy in such a way: input <= wonText
locationinput.text = FlashingWon.Won1.name.text;
// This will copy from input
FlashingWon.Won1.name.text = locationinput.text;
Anyhow, the error that you get has nothing to do with this, it's rather like you already noticed, that one of your TextField is not 'found'. For this I recommend you a best practice: To create instances of the objects you want to use and populate them from the stage through the getChildByName method. This way you will promptly now (specially if you do this on construction or init) if you had any misspelling or miss structure on the childs you want to get.
like so:
var inputText: TextField;
var dynoText: TextField;
In your Constructor or else where at a soon level, give to your vars the proper value:
inputText = getChildByName('locationinput') as TextField;
dynoText = FlashingWon.Won1.getChildByName('name') as TextField;
This way you will soon enough know if one of this 2 textFields were not found under the object you give, and you have only one place to miss spell it. Also you will get code completion on your TextFields.
Finally the copy text part:
dynoText.text = inputText.text;
Hope it helps.
Alright, sorry for the delay, I was out on holidays.
I have opened your example and can see where the problems are:
1) You are trying to reach the FlashingWon when initiating the dynoText on the FIRST frame like so var dynoText = FlashingWon.Won1.getChildByName('name_txt'); BUT the FlashingWon element is ONLY available on the FIFTH frame. Meaning that you cannot refer to it quite yet, unless you add it on the first frame and make in invisible till the fifth frame. (You can make it visible in the goto1 function if you wish after the goToAndStop(5) line)
2) You called the TextField on the Won1 element 'name' which is a restricted sting in AS3, so change it to name_txt or label if you wish and it will work.
Let me know how it worked.
I am looking for some advice on the best way to read in like 200k words and have them each tween from the center of the screen as small dots and tween up to the word filling the SWF then "fly through my head" not literally, but you probably get it...
What would be the best way in AS3 to go about this? I am fairly new to it.
Thanks!
Depending on the origin of your text, you may have to use regular expressions to get rid of punctuation and replace any amount of spaces by a set delimiter.
You could then use the split method of the String class to turn your text into an Array of words.
Each word can then be assigned to a Textfield. Since the Textfield is a DisplayObject, all the manipulations you are mentioning above become possible.
You may be able to streamline all this by creating a class that extends Textfield and defining various methods for the motions you want to implement.
You'll probably want to look at the Timer class and some tweening libraries
Pseudo Code
- Clean up String with regular expressions
-> expected result var cleanString:String = "word1;word2;...wordn";
- Turn String into Array
var words:Array = cleanString.split( ";" );
- Create a class that extends Textfield and define a manipulate() method
var tf:MyTextField = new MyTextField();
//this method could take parameters
//such as x, y, scale , time , delay , ease etc...
tf.manipulate();
- Create an Array( Vector ) of Textfields
loop thru words Array to return array of Textfields
var objects:Array = [ tf1, tf2 , etc...]
- Manipulate objects
loop thru objects Array to manipulate them
if you don't want to do it by hand (like PatrickS described) maybe this will help you ...
http://www.greensock.com/splittextfield/