In this tutorial, I will be talking about actionscript, the scripting language of Macromedia Flash. As I am using an older version of Flash (Flash 8), I will be teaching you Actionscript 2.0 but it shouldn't make much difference. But to make this tutorial a bit more interesting, I will give this tutorial in a "project" format.
Project One:
Aim: To make a little flash program used for target practice for
first person shooter games.
This project will cover everything that we learn in the past tutorials except for shape tweens and imported graphics since we don't need them. Think of this tutorial as “revision with some new stuff”.
Open up a flash document and save it somewhere as “Target practice.fla”.
Look down at the properties panel and click this button:
The numbers 600 X 450 is the stage dimensions, don't worry if they aren't the same as mine. Change the stage dimensions to 400 X 150:
Click OK.
Now its time to make the background. Name your current layer “Background”.
Use the rectangle tool (Hotkey R) to draw a black rectangle anywhere on stage with no outline.
Set the properties of the shape to match mine:
If the shape aligns with the top left hand corner like this select the transformation tool (Hotkey Q):
It will then become clear why it is like this, the middle of the shape aligns with the 0,0 coordinates of the stage, (which for some reason is the top left hand corner):
We want it to be in the middle of the stage. So go to "info" tab under the “Align & info & transform” panel (If you don't have it press CONTROL + I):
Change it so it looks like this:
Now, you have your rectangle where we want it to be but the color could be better. (Yes, we will get to Actionscript in a moment).
Go to the color mixer panel, if you don't have it press SHIFT + F9:
Change it so it looks like this:
Now your rectangle looks good except it could be better, select the gradient transform tool (Hotkey F).
Rotate you the gradient 90 degrees anti-clockwise as we did in the earlier tutorials.
Now, instead of closing in the gradient, we are going to expand it a bit. Click on the arrow and drag it outwards. The end product should look like this:
Now, select the rectangle and create a button out of it, name it background:
You now have an instance of a button on stage, for Actionscript you can give these instances names to refer to in Actionscript. Select the button on the stage using the selection tool and look at the properties panel and give it a name of “back_btn”. Why _btn? Flash can recognize that it is a button in Actionscript and it is very handy for scripting, it is not necessary but it is good practice:
Go back to the main timeline and create a layer above the "Background" layer and call it "Actionscript":
Now, in the first keyframe of the "actionscript" layer (The only keyframe) press F9 as this will open up the actions panel:
Now let's use some actionscript! Type in this code: (All actionscript code I give will be displayed in RED)
var area:String;
Here, we are declaring a variable called "area" and that it is a string. The semicolon at the end (;) separates code from each other:
Now we have our first variable! We will do more actionscript later but first press F9 again to close the actions panel.
Create a new layer, name it “Area” and place it above the "Background" layer but below the "Actionscript" layer (NOTE: All keyframes with actionscript in it will have a small "a" above the keyframe circle):
Select the text tool (Hotkey T) and under the properties panel, change the settings to match these:
In the “Area” layer draw a text box in the lower left corner and in it, type “Area”:
Draw another text box with these settings (Make it a reasonable size):
Dynamic text lets you assign a variable to it like the score of a game etc. The text box you just drew, position it next to the “Area:” text you made before in the “Area” layer:
Right now the text box does nothing, but we are going to assign a variable to it. At the properties panel of the text box (make sure it is selected first), put in the "var" textbox “area” (NOTE: It is case-sensitive):
Now we assigned a variable to the textbox. Soon you will be able to see what it does, but for now let's carry on with making the rest of the project.
Create another layer on top of the "area" layer and below the "actionscript" layer and call it "GO".
