Animating traffic flow in a technical diagram

[dastuph]

I'm in a pickle here. I normally animate to show traffic going between pieces of equipment/stations at a regular pace. I do this by staggering out several tweened layers and establishing a loop. This is all well and good, but my current project has several requirements beyond that which are listed below:

The 'people' need to follow a complex path
The animation needs to depict ebb and flow of people while following a fixed path and occasionally slow down to the point of bunching up at choke points.
The traffic on the path needs to change color from time to time as it travels along the path


I'm not an actionscripter so I've really got my hands full here. I've posted a basic version of what I have here:Demo Animation (http://www.clawhon.com/ani_demo.htm)

This was the rough layout of the animation so its NOTHING fancy. You get the idea though from this layout. The traffic needs to peel off to each indivdual station then fall back into line as well as bunchup in the entryways.

ANY help with this would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Xeef]

hi and welcome to As.Org

don't think it will help much but take a look at this :


Stage Size 800X300

MA = [];
MA[0] = [[100, 0, 50, 0xFF00FF], [100, 150, 450, 0x00FF00]];
MA[1] = [[250, 0, 125, 0xFF00FF], [0, 150, 200, 0x0000ff], [50, 0, 200, 0x0000ff]];
MA[2] = [[200, 0, 100, 0xFF00FF], [-100, 150, 450, 0x00FF00]];
MA[3] = [[350, 0, 175, 0xFF00FF], [0, 150, 200, 0x0000ff], [50, 0, 200, 0x0000ff]];
MA[4] = [[0, 160, 30, 0xFF00FF], [450, 0, 100, 0xFF0000], [0, -150, 300, 0xFF0000], [50, 0, 150, 0xFF0000]];
MA[5] = [[250, 0, 125, 0xFF00FF], [0, 75, 100, 0x0000ff], [50, 0, 200, 0x0000ff]];
MA[6] = [[440, 0, 220, 0xFF00FF], [0, 75, 100, 0xFF0000], [50, 0, 250, 0xFF0000]];
MA[7] = [[250, 0, 125, 0xFF00FF], [0, 10, 10, 0x0000ff], [50, 0, 200, 0x0000ff]];
MA[8] = [[0, 160, 40, 0xFF00FF], [350, 0, 80, 0x0000ff], [0, -75, 150, 0x0000ff], [50, 0, 200, 0x0000FF]];
MA[9] = [[0, 160, 40, 0xFF00FF], [350, 0, 80, 0x0000ff], [0, -150, 150, 0x0000ff], [50, 0, 200, 0x0000FF]];
T = 0;
TT = 0;
onEnterFrame = function () {
for (var a = 0; a<DL.length; a++) {
O = DL[a];
C = new Color(O);
C.setRGB(O.MA[O.ID][3]);
if (O.S<DL[a].MA[O.ID][2]) {
O._x += O.MA[O.ID][0]/O.MA[O.ID][2];
O._y += O.MA[O.ID][1]/O.MA[O.ID][2];
O.S++;
} else {
O.S = 0;
O.ID++;
if (O.ID>O.MA.length) {
O.removeMovieClip();
DL.splice[a, 1];
a--;
}
}
}
if (!(T=++T%10)) {
DL.push(NewD(TT=++TT%10));
}
};
DL = [NewD(0)];
DID = 0;
function NewD(T) {
var D = _root.createEmptyMovieClip("D"+DID, DID++);
D.lineStyle(5, 0, 100);
D.lineTo(.5, 0);
D._x = 50;
D._y = 100;
D.S = 0;
D.ID = 0;
D.MA = MA[T];
return D;
}