Can't make object stop moving

1

Hello all,
I’ve been using Flash 8 for about a year and kirupa has been one of my favorite Flash sites for most of that time. I thought I should join the fun finally!

Currently I’m trying to make a basic game (using AS 2) but I’m having trouble getting the basic physics to behave. I have a ball which is supposed to fall until it touches the ground. It can also be dragged around the screen by the cursor.

I want the ball to fall only if it isn’t being held, but for some reason the condition isn’t working properly. No matter how I structure the condition, the ball still falls even when it’s being held (in fact I can move it from side to side, it is still being held even though it’s falling downward).

I’ve tried putting this on the ball to make it fall conditionally:

onClipEvent(enterFrame){
    if(hitTest(_root.ground1) == false){
        if(!held){this._y += 10;}
    }
}

and I’ve also tried this:

onClipEvent(enterFrame){
    if(!held){
        if(hitTest(_root.ground1) == false){
            this._y += 10;
        }
    }
}

and this:

onClipEvent(enterFrame){
    if((!held) && (hitTest(_root.ground1) == false)){
        this._y += 10;
    }
}

So clearly the placement doesn’t matter, the way I’m doing it simply is not going to work. For some reason.

The “held” variable is boolean. The code that controls whether the ball is picked up/dropped is located on the main timeline, and looks like this:

ball.onRelease = function(){
    if(!held){
        this.startDrag();
        held = true;
    }else{
        this.stopDrag();
        held = false;
    }
}

The last time I created a game with dragable objects, I had to make them appear on the ground instead of falling because I couldn’t make this part work. I’d love to be able to make things react to gravity more naturally than that, and still be able to pick them up. :smiley: