r3dux.org

By default, you can’t. But there’s a way around it so you can by creating a custom event class! In this case, I’m going to deal with extending the Timer class to create a custom timer class with additional properties that we can use to pass data to functions.

The Problem

To demonstrate the problem, consider the following simple timer code:

var greetTimer:Timer = new Timer(3000, 1);
greetTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, greet);
greetTimer.start();
 
function greet(e:TimerEvent):void
{
	trace("Hello!");
}

This will work just fine – it’ll call the greet function once to output “Hello!” three seconds after the timer was started. But what if I wanted to say “Hello, SOME_NAME_STRING”, like “Hello, Bob!”, well you might think you could just do something like this:

var name:String = "Bob"
 
var greetTimer:Timer = new Timer(3000);
greetTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, greet(name));
greetTimer.start();
 
function greet(e:TimerEvent, theName:String):void
{
	trace("Hello, " + theName + "!");
}

But you CAN’T! ActionScript 3 doesn’t allow you to pass parameters other than the TIMER event (i.e. the timer going off) to functions which are bound to a timer. And even changing the order of the parameters, or using a line such as the one below simply won’t work:

greetTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, greet, name);

The Solution

Now, there are things you can do like use intermediate functions which might call a second function, or using anonymous in-line functions (there’s a good forum thread on it here if you want to investigate that route) – but there’s a better way of doing it: We can just create our own custom Timer class!

For this simple text example we could use something like this:

Custom Timer Class (String version) Code:

package
{
	// Import required libraries
	import flash.utils.Timer;
 
	public class cTimer extends Timer
	{
		// Create a property for our cTimer class which can be used to store a String
		public var firstName:String
 
		// Constructor function
		public function cTimer(theDelay:Number, theRepeatCount:int, theFirstName:String):void
		{
			// Create a normal timer using the Timer class' constructor
			super(theDelay, theRepeatCount);
 
			// Set our firstName property to what was passed to our cTimer constructor
			this.firstName = theFirstName;
 
		} // End of constructor
 
	} // End of class
 
} // End of package

And then we could use our custom timer like this:

Flash File Code:

// Import our custom timer class for use
import cTimer;
 
var greetTimer:Timer = new cTimer(3000, 1, "Bob");
greetTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, greet);
greetTimer.start();
 
function greet(e:TimerEvent):void
{
	trace("Hello, " + e.currentTarget.firstName + "!");
}

This will print out “Hello, Bob!” just fine using our the additional property in our customer timer class!

Now that’s all well and good, but most people want to modify some manner of DisplayObject (Sprite, MovieClip etc.) when the timer fires, so for that we can just modify our custom timer class to expect a DisplayObject like this:

Custom Timer Class (DisplayObject version) Code:

package
{
	// Import required libraries
	import flash.utils.Timer;
	import flash.display.DisplayObject;
 
	public class cTimer extends Timer
	{
		// Create a property for our cTimer class which can be used to store a DisplayObject
		public var timerTarget:DisplayObject;
 
		// Constructor function
		public function cTimer(theDelay:Number, theRepeatCount:int, theTimerTarget:DisplayObject):void
		{
			// Create a normal timer using the Timer class' constructor
			super(theDelay, theRepeatCount);
 
			// Set our timerTarget to what was passed to our cTimer constructor
			this.timerTarget = theTimerTarget;
 
		} // End of constructor
 
	} // End of class
 
} // End of package

Flash File Code:

// Import our custom timer class for use
import cTimer;
 
// Create a simple circle centered on the stage and fully transparent
var circle_mc:Circle = new Circle();
circle_mc.x = 275;
circle_mc.y = 200;
circle_mc.alpha = 0;
addChild(circle_mc);
 
// Create a custom timer which does everything a timer does, but also stores a DisplayObject
var circleFadeInTimer:cTimer = new cTimer(2000, 1, circle_mc);
circleFadeInTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, fadeIn);
circleFadeInTimer.start();
 
// Function to make the circle visible
function fadeIn(e:TimerEvent):void
{
	// Using our timerTarget property of our custom timer class (cTimer) modify the DisplayObject
	e.currentTarget.timerTarget.alpha = 1;	
}

Note: The above code assumes you’ve created a symbol with the class name “Circle” – to do so just draw a circle on the stage, stab F8 to convert it to a symbol, and check the Export for ActionScript checkbox and enter Circle as the class name before hitting the [OK] button.

Just like our String example, adding the additional property to our custom timer class allows us to bind the timer to a specific object which we can then manipulate from the function called when the timer fires! So in this case, two seconds after the timer starts our fadeIn function will be called and our circle instance will have its alpha property set to 1 (so it’s fully opaque – hence visible!).

Wrap Up

I came up against this problem whilst helping out some of my ActionScript students who are first-time coders, so wanted to code more Procedurally than Object-Oriented. When you use OOP there are better ways of going about things, but this is still a useful trick to know when you’re dealing with Event Listeners and Timers. I hope it helps out anyone who’s been banging their head against this problem! Cheers!

Flash gets a lot of negative press because it’s seen as using a heap of CPU time and bogging everything down. And it’s a fair cop. Most flash will eat up your CPU cycles even when it’s sitting there doing nothing. But this isn’t a fault of flash, but rather of flash developers. Let me explain…

When you start a piece of flash work, you assign it a frame rate at which you want it to run, so it’ll update the screen, say, 30 times a second. This is all fine and good for when you’re animating things on the stage. But what about when you’re not? Well, it’s still running at 30 frames per second and chewing up your CPU like a crazy melon farmer. This is Not A Good Thing. So, anyhow, I’m watching this video about SWF Framerate Optimisation, and the guy’s showing how you can modify your code to lower the frame rate when there’s not a lot happening, and bring it back up when you’re animating. So I had a crack at it, and lo & behold, it works fine for the specific piece of flash I’d coded it into, so I wondered if I couldn’t just go and make a RateController class. This way, I could add a RateController object to any project to dynamically change the project’s frame rate depending on whether the mouse was over the stage or not.

And after much swearing about not having global access to the stage properties, I found that I COULD!!!

Here’s a working example placed into the attracting particles code I wrote yesterday:

Note: The animation starts at full speed for two seconds on startup. It’ll drop to the sleeping rate (5 fps) two seconds after the mouse leaves the stage, and then ramps back up to its waking rate (30 fps) instantly when the cursor is back over the stage. The FPSCounter shows intermediate numbers because it’s based on an average.

To add a RateController to any flash project, you can just use something like:

import RateController;
 
// Add a new RateController, uses the root stage, runs at 5fps when sleeping, 30fps 
// when active (i.e. when mouse is over the stage), and uses a 2000 millisecond
// delay after the mouse leaves the stage before dropping the FPS to the sleeping rate.
addChild(new RateController(stage, 5, 30, 2000));

Not bad, eh?

Full class code & file downloads after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »