Allowing Sprites to animate themselves.

FlimFlamboyant

I'm not entirely sure if this is a suggestion, or should rather be a bug report, but I find myself frequently wanting to use MovieClip in a slightly unconventional way.

Instead of creating my Sprite instance as a MovieClip from the beginning, thus requiring the timeline to be established when calling .new(), I would like to be able to create a separate MovieClip from within the Sprite that would then control the Sprite when played.

This seems to work right now in certain cases. I'll create a new MovieClip, give it an object of "self", play the animation, and all is well. In other cases, however, the clip will stop part way through unless I add the MovieClip to the stage hierarchy, thus creating another instance of "self", which I don't want to do.

Perhaps there's a simple work-around that I'm missing?

FlimFlamboyant

I should add that it seems to work fine (without adding it to the scene hierarchy) so long as there are no other MovieClips running at the same time.

kredor7

Could you post some sample of the code you are having trouble with?

ar2rsawseen

Yes I would also want to see an example, to understand what are you up to

FlimFlamboyant

Sure thing. Say, for example, I want a particular Sprite to fade in when it is added to the Stage:

Widget = Core.class(Sprite)   function Widget:init() self:addEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, self.onAddedToStage, self) end   function Widget:onAddedToStage() local clip = MovieClip.new( { { 1, 60, self, { alpha = { 0, 1, "linear" } } } } )) clip:play() end

Notice the "self" parameter in my MovieClip, so it can control the alpha parameter of the Sprite that the MovieClip was created in. This allows me to create new instances of Widget as a Sprite ( Widget.new() ) instead of having to make Widget itself a MovieClip and then provide a timeline every time I want a new instance. It would also allow me to animate Widget in any way at any time from within Widget itself.

However, if any other MovieClip animations are currently playing, the line...

clip:play()

... will only play part of the animation. It gets interrupted and stops part way through. The only way to guarantee that the animation completes is to add it to the Stage hierarchy. However, I can't do this...

self:addChild(clip)

... because that would be adding "self" to "self", which naturally results in a crash. If I just add it to stage, I end up with a duplicate Widget on my screen.

Does that make sense?

talis

What about MovieClip:gotoAndPlay(frame) function, in this case you can guarantee it will always start from the beginning of clip.
Or you can check in onAddedToStage function Event.COMPLETE if dispatched then play if not MovieClip:gotoAndPlay(frame) .

(
When a MovieClip object finishes it playing (by reaching its final frame or a frame with stop action),
it dispatches an Event.COMPLETE event.
)

But what will happen in multiple instances have no idea, haven't tried it just came to me:D

FlimFlamboyant

When there are multiple MovieClips playing, Event.COMPLETE is never triggered in the example I gave above. I have to add it to the stage hierarchy to make that happen, which poses a problem for me in this case.

ar2rsawseen

@FlimFlamboyant oh I see
for this purpose I usually use GTween:
https://github.com/gideros/GTween

More info:
http://appcodingeasy.com/Gideros-Mobile/Gideros-GTween-with-easing

It can actually tween any property that can be passed to set method, so you can write your custom set methods for your classes and tween anything you would want:
http://www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/980/tween-anything/p1

FlimFlamboyant

Oh, and I don't have to add it to the stage hierarchy? Sweet; I think that's just the sort of thing I'm looking for. Thanks!

ar2rsawseen

Yes no need to add it to the stage