Make a movie clip always be on top

[ShnitzelKiller]

I have a bunch of movieclips which constantly do the following:

mc.parent.addChild(mc);

as in bring themselves on top. I want a movie clip to always stay blocking them, without adding it to the stage every frame, which is unnecessary memory usage.

[sstalder]

You can make use of the setChildDepth method.

[redjag]

It seems this is one of the things that became more annoying in the switch to AS3 from AS2. I think in AS2 you could just define a really large depth for the one you wanted to keep in front, but in AS3 depth is one-for-one with child objects. Anyway, what you probably want to do is use swapChildren() and every time you add an object, swap its position with the one you want to keep on top. Obviously if you are adding multiple objects in one go you'll only need to do this once with the last one each time.

[5TonsOfFlax]

The displayList is actually a tree, so what you can do is add another layer in the tree by putting in separate containers.

var normalContainer:Sprite = new Sprite();
var alwaysTopContainer:Sprite = new Sprite();

addChild(normalContainer);
addChild(alwaysTopContainer); 

//always add other children to normalContainer, and stuff in alwaysTopContainer will remain on top of them.

[redjag]

Touché. I think I'm gonna like it here.