Wildform Wildform is the creator of the Flix SWF video encoder and the SWfX SWF text effects generator.
This tutorial was written by FR Elkins.
last modified November 17, 2000
©2000 Wildform, Inc.
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Flash 5: Load, Unload and Chain SWFX Effects
Table of Contents
Part 4
Why Levels Aren't As Useful

Still in Flash:

  1. Save As loadtest with the name loadtest1. Delete the empty_clip from the stage. Double-click on the first frame of the movie. Once again, the Frame Actions appears. Type or paste:
    loadMovieNum ("ani1.swf", 1);
    This line of code loads ani1.swf into _level 1 of the main movie.
  2. Click Control, and choose Test to see the effect load. No problem! Now how to unload it if you want to take it off the stage? Since ani1.swf does have that end variable in it, it seems as if you could re-use the previous code above to check for the variable and unload it. You might think about using code like this:
    loadMovieNum ("ani1.swf", 1);
    if (_level1.end == true) {
    unloadMovieNum (1);
    endif;
    }

Or can you? Try it if you have the time. You'll see it doesn't work. Why not? Because when loadtest goes through the frame action, end isn't yet true. And because we're not looping loadtest, the movie never gets back to the code to see if end has become true. At this point you might say, ok, well let's add a second frame with a gotoAndPlay(1) on it.

But that doesn't work either, as you can see by trying it. We could unload ani1.swf from the level by loading something else in its place, but it's not as easy as using the movie clip!

This is why using movie clips is the preferred method - they loop on one frame and it's so easy to use onClipEvents to load and unload whatever you need! Further, what if you wanted to resize ani2.swf, or change its _alpha? How would you do that with all those key frames scattered over all those levels? Take a look at ani2.swf with the Debugger running by clicking Control and choosing Debug Movie, and you'll see how many submovie clips and stuff are involved! It can be done of course, but why work so hard if you don't have to?

Now you can see the usefulness of the movie clip as a container, because it's so easy to tell a movie clip what to do. If you just need to toss several effects into a larger movie, let 'em play, and then forget about 'em, it's ok to load them into levels. But if you need to do anything else to them, levels just aren't handy.

Table of Contents
Part 5
Changing the _X and _Alpha of the Movie Clip

When you see how simple this really is, you'll want to weep with joy. Let's start a new movie to show quickly how easy it easy to change properties of our effects when they're in a movie clip. And we'll easily change the x and alpha of our effect. Remember, when we made the effect in SWFX we set its x to 20.

  1. Create a New movie. Create a new movie clip and again name it empty. Drag an instance of it onto the stage and name it empty_clip. Double-click on the first frame to open Frame Actions. Set the dialog to Expert Mode and type or paste:
    with (empty_clip) {
    loadMovie ("ani1.swf", 1);
    _alpha = 50;
    _x = 300;
    }
    with is the Flash 5 equivalent of tellTarget, but it does a little more. The main difference between the two is that tellTarget requires a target path and can't target objects.
    with also allows you to handle multiple properties of a movie clip in script with less code and to do it more easily.
  2. Test the movie and see how ani1.swf looks now. It has that nice faded alpha look and has been moved over to the left.

Table of Contents
Conclusion
Ok, so now you can load your SWFX effects into levels or movie clips, unload them, time them, set variables in them, and change their properties. You're a manipulative genius. You should be well on your way to see how you can create more complex effects! Good luck!
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©2000 Wildform, Inc.