I Need A Good, In-depth, Hierarchical Flash 5 Object Reference!

programming flash
1

I apologize for the duplication, but I thought that the subject may be a bit misleading, and tell people of where THEY CAN GET a good reference, not that I AM IN NEED of a good reference. . . .

I’m trying to get a very simple Actionscript project done in Flash 5, but I’m getting VERY frustrated, because I don’t have the specifics on the hierarchy of Flash 5’s objects, properties and methods.

The specific task involves simply going to and playing certain scenes and frames based on the values of a couple of flag variables that are stored within different scenes, and also turning those flag (boolean) variables on and off while currently in scenes other than where the variables are. I tried accessing the flag variables using the following dot-notation reference:

{scene}.{variable}

but then learned that Flash 5 doesn’t store scenes as objects. I then thought that, perhaps, scenes are stored as properties within the MOVIECLIP object, but I’m uncertain as to whether they are stored in any kind of an array or something; I don’t know how to set up such a reference.

ALSO, I would GREATLY appreciate if someone could point me to a good hierarchical reference where I could get this information without having to go on a wild goose chase in order to get it.

I can be reached by phone at (212) 962-3680. Ask to speak to Steve Weber and say it’s regarding a website question I had.

As I said, I have a good knowledge of objects, properties and methods, but can’t seem to move foreward because I don’t have the specifics regarding Flash 5 per se.

Thanks
Steve Weber

2

Scenes are transparent in Flash. They’re just a way to organize your file better (or worse…). When it compiles the swf, Flash just puts the scenes one after another, in one big timeline.

So basically, a variable that you define in the _root. of the first scene will still be there in the _root of scene 2 because it is the same.

I hope I understood what you wanted to know.

pom :asian:

3

Hmmm… Well, supposing I tell you what it is that I’d like to accomplish.

I’ve got a one-column menu movie that looks like the side profile of a vertical telephone receiver cord (why not, the website is for a phone company), where each of the individual coils (one revolution) will be a menu button. When a coil/button is rolled over, a one-time left-to-right blip passes over that coil.

The top of the menu movie seemlessly connects with other imagery that shows the rest of the telephone receiver cord (a 90 degree curve, which leads into a straight section of the cord).

I’d like to rig this movie up so that, whenever the mouse moves over any one of the coils, the blip starts passing over each of the coils starting with the one the mouse rolled, over going upward/backward toward the top of the menu.

I thought that the best way of accomplishing this is to have over each coil a movieclip containing 3 layers and 9 frames:

The top layer is an action layer with an endless loop spanning frames 1 & 2.

The second layer is a button spanning all 9 frames of the movieclip, whose mouse rollover kicks the playhead into the frame 3.

The bottom layer is the blip movie, which starts at frame 3 and ends at frame 9 (the movie plays only once). When the end of the movie is reached, an action at frame 9 on the top layer kicks the playhead back to frame 1, throwing it back into the endless loop, where the mouse button again awaits a rollover.

I’m up to the point where each of the movieclip instances play the blip when the mouse rolls over the button above it, but I need to know the best way of establishing the order in which the movieclips need to be played (starting with the rolled-over one). I’d rather not have a gotoAndPlay at the end of each movie pointing to the next movie to play, just in case any menu items are inserted or removed. I’d rather set this up, perhaps, with an array or something, that can be set up from one single place, allowing each of the movie clips to reference it, thus determining what the next movie to play is. I’m trying to MINIMIZE maintenance.

Any ideas?

4

Sorry, you lost me… Maybe someone who speaks better English will help you… Inigo? :stuck_out_tongue:

Or if you can attach the file, so that I can see what you mean, that would be better.

pom :asian: