Dance matt AS3

[kizzab]

Hi im basically trying to make a "dance matt" like game..

I have a character with several movie clips etc and im basically trying to make a game where by arrows come in a line and the user has to press the correct arrow key in time.. a bit like Guitar hero etc some thing like that...

So there would be a timeline so to speak with arrow keys coming from the right hand of the screen and when in a certain area a key press would play the animation and flash would score points acording to how many the user hits in time.. Im really stuck on this and any help would be really appreciated i hope i have made myself clear!

Thanks

AS3 please

[Squize]

What part are you stuck on exactly ? And what parts have you got working so far ( In terms of code ) ?

Squize.

[hatu]

I think those games just have an editor where you sync the keypresses with the music manually? Make an array of correct keys and times for them and then compare them with the user input

[VENGEANCE MX]

There's no advantage to writing a project like this in AS3. Use AS3 only for code-intensive things that have to fling around thousands of sprites, like an RTS or space shooter, or perhaps a 3D engine. Otherwise you're just making things harder for yourself. AS1&2 excelled in sheer speed of prototyping; you could have a working demo of our engine up in an hour, limited primarily by the speed you can type. AS3, on the other hand, is a minefield of strict coding conventions and compiler errors.

[_Ric_]

There's no advantage to writing a project like this in AS3

Well, that's your opinion. I, and I'm sure many others, believe that AS3 is a superior language, quite aside from it's speed advantage. And if he's asking for help in AS3, perhaps he already has knowledge of it - prototyping in AS2 wouldn't be very quick for him if he first had to learn AS2. And besides that, who's to say he doesn't need the speed? A dancing type game may include all sorts of intensive effects if you want it to.

[tonypa]

With AS3 you could generate the arrows dynamically using computeSpectrum. I do believe most games use preset patterns but in theory it would be possible to make them appear based on music.

[hatu]

There's no advantage to writing a project like this in AS3. Use AS3 only for code-intensive things that have to fling around thousands of sprites, like an RTS or space shooter, or perhaps a 3D engine. Otherwise you're just making things harder for yourself. AS1&2 excelled in sheer speed of prototyping; you could have a working demo of our engine up in an hour, limited primarily by the speed you can type. AS3, on the other hand, is a minefield of strict coding conventions and compiler errors.

Mmh, it's actually pretty much as fast to prototype on. I've made tons of prototypes in AS3 in under an hour

[mr_malee]

There's no advantage to writing a project like this in AS3. Use AS3 only for code-intensive things that have to fling around thousands of sprites, like an RTS or space shooter, or perhaps a 3D engine. Otherwise you're just making things harder for yourself. AS1&2 excelled in sheer speed of prototyping; you could have a working demo of our engine up in an hour, limited primarily by the speed you can type. AS3, on the other hand, is a minefield of strict coding conventions and compiler errors.

will your prototype work straight away?, or will you find yourself fixing a bug for 1 hour. This "AS3 is bad" argument is getting tiring. Whats it been, 4 years now?

[VENGEANCE MX]

Just a bit bitter that after spending several hours on the problem, I couldn't find any way to addChild() a Bitmap that I'd declared in a different function, or even in a different frame of the same function (that is to say, it appears to have disappeared somewhere in the EnterFrame, which I'm pretty sure shouldn't happen). I really wanted to load in all my sprites to variables at the start of the script and be able to addChild() them in whenever they were needed, but it really doesn't want to let me. I have no idea why. And FlashDevelop doesn't have any kind of trace() functionality, so debugging this kind of thing is a b*tch.

Contrast this with AS2, where you could just assign a loadBitmap to a _root variable and be able to use it any time. I mean sure, it must be possible for AS3 to do this, but I did try every arrangement of my function structure I could think of, and it was all in the same class, so there shouldn't have been any scope problems. In the end I gave up, and am now declaring the Bitmap for every background and button I use, every time I use it. Not happy, because making interfaces without a stage to draw on is already enough of a pain in the ass.

Bottom line here is that if the guy doesn't know AS yet (I'm just making that assumption), he really shouldn't be diving in at the deep end.

Malee, while I agree that AS3 makes it very easy to fix real bugs, in my usage of it it's also the cause of so many bugs that I wouldn't have had in AS1. I'll admit that this is more an indication of me not being any good at it than anything else, but I really do have to think to make something work in AS3, whereas I never found that a problem in AS1.

[_Ric_]

Bottom line here is that if the guy doesn't know AS yet ... he really shouldn't be diving in at the deep end.

Again - your opinion, based on the fact that (in your own words) you don't personally get on with AS3.

If you're going to advise a newcommer to AS to start with the outdated version, I think it's only fair that we balance that with another opinion, which is to start with the current version - and that's based on the fact that I and many others get on with AS3 just fine!

[Incrue]

I couldn't find any way to addChild() a Bitmap that I'd declared in a different function, or even in a different frame of the same function

What do you mean by frame inside a function?I mean, i always think on 'frames' as timeline frames
Anyway, isnt that the stuff that is created inside a function ceasing to exists when the function is over?

[hatu]

And FlashDevelop doesn't have any kind of trace() functionality, so debugging this kind of thing is a b*tch.

It totally does. Somethings really wrong with your configs

[VENGEANCE MX]

Had a talk over the code with Incrue on MSN, has cleared a few things up, but I'm sure I tried that stuff already. :/

I am aware that trace() functionality exists in FlashDevelop, but I've never had it as default, and still don't have it now. My whole setup's pretty out of whack... if I recall correctly, one of the compile buttons doesn't work, it's not using the Debug player I told it to use, and I'm pretty sure it's not compiling for Flash Player 10 like I asked it to. It's most likely out-of-date too, but I'm much too afraid to reinstall it.

Ordinarily I'd do something about my dev situation, but when you're working in a VM you tend to just be happy that it works at all and leave it at that. :P Besides, it's not like I do this for a living or anything.