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I learnt AS3 in a hurry – I had a couple of weeks to get my head around it and get things working – no nicities – just get it working so you can teach it… And what I missed by scrabbling through the ActionScript 3.0 Bible was the propagating nature of the event model. And it’s awesome! You layer things on other things and the event propagates down the tree until it hits the last branch..

In the example below I just create three boxes bound to a Box class, and when adding them to the screen I don’t add them all to the stage – I just add the first one to the stage, add the second one to the first one, and add the last one to the middle one, and just look at MOUSE_OVER and MOUSE_OUT events. Because they’re MovieClips added to MovieClips etc, the event travels down the tree and hits each branch using the current status to work on. Move your mouse over the boxes below to see what I mean:

That’s going to come in really useful… I can just feel it.

Source Code:

Box class:

package
{
	import flash.display.MovieClip;
	import flash.events.MouseEvent;
 
	public class Box extends MovieClip
	{
 
		public function Box():void
		{
			this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OVER, isOver);
			this.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_OUT, isOut);
		}
 
		private function isOver(evt:MouseEvent):void
		{
			this.alpha = 0.5;
		}
 
		private function isOut(evt:MouseEvent):void
		{
			this.alpha = 1;
		}
	}
}

var topBox:Box = new Box;
topBox.x = 150;
topBox.y = 150;
addChild(topBox);
 
var middleBox:Box = new Box;
middleBox.x = 100; // Remember this is -RELATIVE- to the MovieClip this MovieClip is being embedded in....
middleBox.y = 100;
topBox.addChild(middleBox);
 
var bottomBox:Box = new Box;
bottomBox.x = 100;
bottomBox.y = 100;
middleBox.addChild(bottomBox);

Ahh, SimCity… I remember this happening well, and leading to a No SimCity After 8pm rule

We’re making good progress here in Week 4 of CUFDIG302A – Author Interactive Sequences, so we’re looking at more Symbols and Instances, and how we can use Timers to call functions at specified intervals.

If you’ve not gone through any of the previous weeks slides and you’re new to coding, then take a step back to and take it order – it’ll really help.

I’ve been a bit busy of late and been finding it hard to get the time and inclination to get the slides together in the different format soon after they’re done. Comments, suggestions, thanks etc. are always welcome and give me incentive to keep on keepin’ on…

As usual, the download link to the slides along with some legal gubbins regarding their use is after the break, so jump on in and assert your control!

Read the rest of this entry »

You’ve got to admit, that’s pretty awesome… (best viewed full screen so you can really see what going on, btw).

Update: Get this functionality now. For free. In GIMP. Via the resynthesizer plug-in.

Update 2: Here’s a guide to using the resynthesizer plug-in, which does goes through the steps to modify the exact same images as in the video, but in GIMP! Sweet!

Update 3: I decided to write my own guide… =D