Swapdepth on duplicate mc in an mc

I am having tremendous trouble with swapdepths on a movie. I am quite the lame coder as I am more the designer type but I am trying to get some basics down for a simple RPG.

Basically I have 2 layers. the top layer is 9 empty clips in a 3x3 grid I load all the ‘objects’ into. These loop around so I can build up a map in sections. It loads the next ‘set’ when the player moves to the next ‘section’ (the player doesn’t move as the background does).

the second layer is simply a background with the same idea but has no interactive elements.

The player is on the same layer as the ‘objects’. I don’t know if layers affect depth information.

The problem is that I am trying to make each object within the loaded .swf modular, in that it checks whether or not the player is in its hitzone, and applies certain things. like swapdepths, transparency etc.

transparency works a treat, but swapdepths seems to only work on ONE of the objects I have in that sections objects movieclip. It even traces that the player is below the object with getDepth tests…but it doesn’t actually go under. Some clips are instances, while others are not…but still, only ONE works properly.

Is there any weird swapdepth rules in regards to changing depth of clips inside loaded movieclips inside a main movie?!

I have tried swapping individual objects as well as the parent clip as a whole and neither seem to work.

I will post an example once I get it working again…I just lost it all trying to do a mask system instead, which also bombed :m: