Susan Hoffman - Flash Homework

Barnes & Noble Class on Flash 5: Lesson 5

In Lesson 5, we assembled the various items we had previously made and incorporated action scripting to create a movie. What is supposed to happen is that the saucer flies in from upper right and hovers over the three grazing cows. Clicking on any one of the cow buttons should cause the space ship to fly over to that cow, shoot out a laser beam and fry the poor animal. An explosion ensues, and all you are left with is the sizzling remains of one cow. You should be bale to click the three cows in any order, and once all three cows are cooked, the ship flies back off into space. Ultimately I should incorporate a reset button that would allow you to play the gruesome scene all over again.

Unfortunately, mine doesn't quite work that way. As you can see, the space ship flies in from the right and immediately sets out to fry the first cow. Clicking on the left and center cows only makes them moo.

I had a multitude of problems with this project, much of which seemed to stem from the original cow button. What I had done was to import a cartoon cow as a .gif file, then in button editing mode, used the lasso to separate the head and turn it slightly for the "over mode," then added the moo .wav file for the "down" mode. However, whenever I did it like this, then tried to test the movie, Flash would crash on me. I could not Publish the movie either - Flash would simply crash. I found that by removing the cow layer, it worked OK. At that point I knew something was amiss with the cow buttons but I wasn't sure what.

So I redrew the cow from scratch as a graphic symbol, separated its head and created the head as a new graphic symbol, then went into button creation mode to bring head and body together in my three frames. That seemed to solve the crashing problem.

In button editing mode I can run the play head over the BBQ buttons and see the explosion happen, so I know it's there. I just can't seem to figure out what I might have done wrong to make the movie play out of sequence.

Another odd thing ... when the movie starts, Right Cow is still alive and kicking. But once it's gone through and played once, even if you hit the Reset button, Right Cow remains a mere carcass.

If anyone has any ideas where I might have gone astray, I'd appreciate your thoughts. Meanwhile I am going to continue to plug away at this until I get it right.

Click here to get the original .fla file of the above disaster.