Help a newb with his first game

programming flash
1

Hey, I’m a complete flash neophyte, I started learning it 1 week ago. I’m trying to create my first game without referring to tutorials but I have a problem that I can’t figure out so maybe someone can help?

I’m making an arcade style asteroid shooter(original huh? =) ) and I’m trying to use duplicateMovieClip to duplicate the bullets when I press fire(a Keyboard button). Well I can’t figure out how to delay the firing so that I don’t get a cotinuous stream of bullets. I tried a few different solutions, none gave me the desired result. I came to the crab shooter tutorial on this site and used that code but since it was designed for a mouse button it still gives me a continuous stream of bullets if the user holds down the keyboard button. Any hints??

Right now the code I’m using is pretty much traight from the crab tutorial on this page:

Main timeline:

var fireZ:Number = 0;
 
if (Key.isDown(Key.CONTROL)) {
  fireZ = 1;
  i += 1;
  duplicateMovieClip (laser, "laser" + i, i);
  
  }
}

Script on the bullet movie:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
 if (this != level10.laser) {
  if (_root.fireZ == 1) {
   this._y -= _root.fireSpeed;
   this._visible = 1;
  }
  if (this._y < 100) {
   this.removeMovieClip ();
   
  }
 }
}

Um, if anything is unclear let me know. As I said this is my first attempt so sorry if my code is messy or my naming conventions are strange =) I was trying to do this without getting help but I’ve been messing with it for several hours and can’t come up with anything…