How to organise a Flash file?

I'm just starting out with Flash and am creating a few little things. So far I've been building them on the main stage/Scene 1.

Now that they are getting a bit more complex I see this isn't the best way to organise things.

What is the best practice? Should I be doing each part of the game or project in a separate movie clips?

Then bring them onto the stage or activate them through action script?

The walk-through for my project is like this:
start screen: choose a game
game screen: complete game, move onto next game screen
and so on.

Would each game be a movie clip or how should it be organised?

You can see I'm already having trouble with this approach here:
http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...lip-Error-2007

Are there any guides or tutorials on how to organise things? I'm following the Lynda.com videos on Flash at the moment but so far it hasn't come up.

Thanks!

Hello ScriptAction-
Lynda.com is great. They have whole courses on developing games. You can use MovieClips to handle your intro and completion screens or you could have seperate FLA/SWF files. It really depends on the complexity of what you are developing. Either way you will need a good grasp of using variables/arrays to store the information at the highest level and pull it into the child files/MovieClips as needed.

To stay organized, It is important to name your Layers, and Frame Labels. You can add folders to group your layers.

I never have used multiple scenes in a project.

Keep learning on Lynda.com they will answer most of your questions.

Thanks jkell. I am working my way through the Lynda.com stuff. I watched the intro to Flash CS and now am doing the Actionscript 3.0 series.So far these two haven't addressed the issue of managing and arranging the different segments of the games. Can you recommend some other ones please?

I know about naming layers etc but that is not what I am referring to.

The games I am trying to make are very simple IMO. Each part of the game is only one screen i.e. one game is on a screen and the player drags and drops some images into the right places. Then they move onto the next game.

I will keep looking. I assumed this would be widely covered as things seem to get quite complicated quite quickly if anything is more than a little bit deeper than one activity per fla file.

If it is as simple as a drag and drop interaction, you can use the timeline to create a series of interactions. Every different interaction can be on its own keyframe. Give yourself 10 blank keyframes between each interaction. If you use frame labels you can keep things pretty fresh and clean.

Some Courses on Lynda.com for more advanced games are:
http://www.lynda.com/ActionScript-3-...ent/366-2.html

It may be over your head if you are just starting out, but if you keep watching the lessons, it will eventually sink in.

Attachment 74025Maybe I am trying to over complicate things then. I've attached & linked a simplified version of one of these games I am trying to do.

https://dl.dropbox.com/u/309502/flas...20-%20Copy.swf

The finished version would have more objects to drag, but it would be the same idea. Then, once all objects have been successfully dragged to the right places, the game would move onto a new screen with different letters to drag.

Could that all be done on different parts of the main timeline or should each mini-game be in its own movie clip?

Thanks for the link to that course, I will start on that when I've finished my current one.

Thanks!

You do not need to have a separate movie clip if you are using the timeline.

This course has a very nice drag and drop game you may be interested in.
http://www.lynda.com/ActionScript-3-...g/67685-2.html

Thanks, I will try and duplicate it all in frame 2 and see if it still works.

Yes, that is the course I am currently working on. I would like to basically use that same drag and drop but have more than one version on the timeline/in the Flash file.

Once they've finished that drag and drop game they then do another one but with different characters (icons) to drag. Could that be done on the timeline?

Thanks for your help.

This is my version of that tutorial:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/309502/flas...raganddrop.fla
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/309502/flas...raganddrop.swf
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/309502/flash/new/Map.as
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/309502/flash/new/DragDrop.as

It works ok in frame one but once they've done it once I want them to go to frame 2 to do it again but with different items to drag.

Is that possible or would it need starting from scratch?

Thanks.