How to add Movie Clips to Array?

Question

Hey everyone so I have been at this for awhile now and I'm trying to figure out the best way to go about this. So I have an array of Movie Clip Objects calledouterPlanets and they are added to an array called aPlanetArray so these planets in the array are added to the stage and have spacing between them all. When the Player touches the screen the character jumps on another planet and the planets scroll down on the +y axis to keep the character positioned to the center.

I add 10 planets to the stage because for performance Issues I don't want to add a lot and lose FPS so my idea was when the array is getting low such as the planet array is <= 5 then add more planets to the top position of the last last planet. Hope I am making sense. Think of it like a stack of blocks the blocks fall down one by one and more is added to the top of them as more fall down so its never ending.

Here is how I add them to the stage:

//Instantiate Arrays
        aPlanetArray = new Array();

        //Numbers
        xSpacing = 100;
        ySpacing = 200;
        startPoint = new Point((stage.stageWidth / 2), (stage.stageHeight / 2) );


        addOuterPlanets();

private function addOuterPlanets():void 
    {
        for (var i:int = 0; i < nPlanets; i++)
        {
            outerPlanets = new mcOuterPlanets();
            outerPlanets.x = startPoint.x + (xSpacing * i);
            outerPlanets.y = startPoint.y - (ySpacing * i);
            stage.addChild(outerPlanets);
            aPlanetArray.push(outerPlanets);

        }
    }

The only thing I can come up with at the moment is this:

if (aPlanetArray.length <= 5)
        {
            addOuterPlanets();
        }

This adds a new set of planets but of course just adds them to the center of the stage and not on top of the other planets. Any idea how to accomplish this?

Current Progress:

private function collisionPlanetHandler():void 
    {
        for (var i:int = 0; i < aPlanetArray.length; i++)
        {
            var currentPlanet:mcOuterPlanets = aPlanetArray[i];

            planetContainer.addChild(aPlanetArray[i]);

            if (character.hitTestObject(currentPlanet) && !nextlevel)
            {
                trace("HIT");
                yDown = (stage.stageHeight / 2) - (currentPlanet.y - 200); //have object tween to center of stage or where was last positioned
                //tap back to false
                tap = false;
                nextlevel = true;
                if (!bNullObject)  // have null object so doesnt loop again and cause error for planet == null
                {
                    planet.destroy();
                    planet =  null;
                }
                bNullObject = true;
                planetHit = currentPlanet; // to land on correct planet
                aPlanetArray.splice(i, 1);
                randomRotation = randomNumber(1, 2);  //Stop in random rotation for next planet

                TweenLite.to(planetContainer, 2.0, { y:yDown, ease:Elastic.easeOut } );


                planetIncrement -= 300;
                addPlanet(randomNumber((stage.stageWidth/2) - 220, ((stage.stageWidth/2)) + 220), planetIncrement);

            }

        }



    }

Neal Davis · Accepted Answer

example code

function gameSetup():void{
    setupUsers();
    loadSounds();
    createLevel(_level1);
    addInitialPlanets();
    addCharacter();
}

private function addInitialPlanets():void{
    for (var i:int = 0; i < nPlanets; i++){
        addPlanet(startPoint.x + xSpacing * i, startPoint.y + ySpacing * i);
    }
}

private function addPlanet(xPos:Number, yPos:Number):void{
    p = new mcOuterPlanets(); 
    // var p:mcOuterPlanets = new mcOuterPlanets(); // this is preferred method
    p.x = xPos;
    p.y = yPos;
    stage.addChild(p);
    // addChild(p); // this is preferred method
    aPlanetArray.push(p);
}

Now when you need to add another planet above the others do

addPlanet(xPos, yPos);
// where xPos is desired X and yPos is desired y

You see what is happening here? I'm positioning the planet by using a separate function. You can offload other tasks related to add a planet as well. Imagine something like this:

addPlanet(xPos, yPos, color, size, speed, ringCount);

Get the idea?

Also you'll want to remove the planets that are far below the player to prevent slowdown. Or you could simply move the ones far below up to the top to recycle them instead of creating new planets all the time.

How to add Movie Clips to Array?

Answers (2)

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