Problems with MovieClip Buttons

[bflumign]

So I am totally inexperienced at this. Through some tutorials I thought I had this figured out--but alas here I sit pulling my hair out and cursing. My 2 year old learned a new word today.

Basically what I am trying to do is create 3 groups of movieclip/buttons that load different options onto an image. I don't know if there is a more simple way of doing this or a plain just better way. But the thing doesn't work the way it stands--that's all I know.

Any help would be awesome!

Thanks!

[bflumign]

Does anyone have any ideas or a tutorial that I can reference?

Thanks in advance.

[Shaedo]

Ok we'll go through this bit by bit:

you will be getting some of these:

1151: A conflict exists with definition clipArray in namespace internal.

Warning: 3596: Duplicate variable definition.

This is because you are using the same variable name more than once (and trying to assign values to them) in the same scope. so a scope would be in the same class, function or as in your case timeline.

so if you do this

var asdf:Number = 1;
var asdf:Number = 2;//error 

flash chucks an error because it wants you to use different vars eg

var asdf:Number = 1;
var asdf2:Number = 2;// ok! :) 

because of the way you have written your code (more on that) its more difficult to identify these conflicts because they are on different levels. So the short term solution is to go through and give them all different names eg
find all your

var clipArray:Array

change to

var clipArray1:Array
var clipArray2:Array
//etc 

you will also be getting these errors

1021: Duplicate function definition.

which is basically the same only for functions:
go and find EVERY function and give it a unique name.

At the level of complexity you are trying to achieve you need to move off coding on the timeline. Some people may disagree with this statement; They are wrong. You need to start making classes even if you are just creating a document class for this project. If you do this then the errors that you currently have will never occur. There are many other benefits as well.

Depending on your time and how capable you want to become in coding flash I would recommend starting this project using classes (.as files) now.

It would also appear that you may have attempted to build your project in one massive move (I could be wrong, if so then my apologies ignore the rest) when it is a much safer move to build it in small managable steps. So get the first button working, then the first group of buttons working and then start adding more groups. IF you have done this then it would be helpful to please post you most recent Working project.


Luck,

S

[bflumign]

Thank you so much for your reply!

I built the attached fla first and then made the one that I attached initially. But being new at this didn't understand what all of the new errors meant--what you replied with makes complete sense.

I think you are right about using classes.

But I have no idea how to write my own. Could you point me in the right direction or send me to a tutorial that can walk me through it?

[Shaedo]

This is a good tutorial and it explains things well I think.
http://www.flashandmath.com/bridge/intro/index.html

to me it looks like you are trying to do this:
(in plain English)
Have a single picture with 3 properties that you can change; the Border (edging), the fill (PUL?) and the Pattern.
you want to display all possible combinations of these by clicking buttons that change one aspect at a time.

I might suggest that you look at using a mask for the pattern
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS3LCR/F...ject.html#mask
this way you will be able to add new patterns with out having to cut them to the desired shape (but this might be another thing to learn and thus more trouble than it's worth for you right now)

I might suggest you look at using colourTransform
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/AS3LCR/F...olorTransform()
(but this might be another thing to learn and thus more trouble than it's worth for you right now)

Luck,
S
for the border and fill

[bflumign]

Thanks again! You rock!