Loading conflict

[Austin]

Maybe it's me or maybe's it's Flash but knowing which would make me a little bit more sane. First of all let me ask if anyone here has had the problem where the SWF will run just fine, meaning everything links to everything it's supposed to, buttons, etc, unless it is being downloaded off of the internet or being tested in Flash via show streaming. I have quite a few scenes, rather than calling out to sections within the main timeline I had the buttons call out to specific scenes...a pre-loader within each scene.

ugh. In the beginning i tried it with fewer scenes and called out withing the main timeline but I had problems there as well when testing with streaming.

Any insights would be EXTREMELY useful as I need to have this thing done yesterday.

thanks---

[DamnGzM]

Eey,

Well, what can I say? Preloading is just making your movie wait untill (part of) your movie or scene(s) is done loading. If you want to skip parts of your movie, while preloading, you might end up in problems since the browser only loads top-down or bottom-up, and does not skip parts or scenes if the user wishes to. You could load-movie's into your main movie to have a work around. But perhaps I don't exactly understand your question (like I dont see what point you are making with the buttons-thing).. Lemme know.

LTrZ!
DamnGzM.

[DamnGzM]

Oh and try to make your problems a bit more clear instead of refering to them as "some problems". It might help me understand your issues a bit better



DamnGzM.

[Austin]

I am working on a project where there is a window on the left side of the movie and a window on the right side of the movie. In the left window there are various buttons. In the right window there is nothing, yet. When the user rolls over a button on the left window some text pops up in the right window. This text that appears in the right window from a rollover comes from the buttons over state. If the user clicks a button in the left window the entire left window is now replaced with the footage in which the button is describing. This happens because I assigned the button the action to go to a different scene where the left and right windows are duplicated but the buttons have been removed so that the new scenes footage can play in the left windows space. In this new scene there is a 12 second preloader waiting for an animation to load within this same new scene. I have done this for all the buttons.

Now, here is my problem: If I just export the swf and play it, it plays fine without a hint of a problem. The rollovers work fine and the buttons click where they are supposed to. However, if I test my movie with show streaming or if I load it off of the internet my rollovers still work but the buttons do not go where they are supposed to. Instead, some buttons will go to scenes that other buttons were supposed to go. Now, this will only happen if I don't let the movie download entirely before clicking any buttons...which would mean that it is now working like the rendered SWF because it is in a sense, loaded.

From what I understand Flash looks at the scenes as if they are all connected. If you study a size report every scene contributes to the total amount of frames, which is displayed on the left side of the size report. The scenes frames are displayed on the right. So Flash, when it is loading loades every scene even if it is not be accessed by the user, hence it is loading in the background. This is great but I think that for some reason this is what is messing with me, the playhead jumps to sections that is being loaded regardless of what the action commands.

Also, I haven't used the load/unload movie command much and if this would be a better way of going about it I am totally open to the idea.

ok...this has been a very long message. I hope I have made myself somewhat more clear. If I can be any more specific let me know.

Thanks

[Austin]

When you load a SWF into your main SWF does the main SWF re-use some of the symbols that may exist in the new SWF that also exist in the main SWF, thus cutting down download time?

[DamnGzM]

Eey!

Oki, I guess I did understand your problem a bit in the first time. But now I know for sure, and now I can tell you your only option is indeed to load movieclips, or to let the user wait for the entire swf to be loaded, but that is not very neat. If you have any problems regarding to loading movieclips, feel free to ask.

For about your last question: no. It does not re-use symbols if these symbols are located in different swf's, because each swf is a standalone application. What you could do, is not to put objects which are re-used many times (or maybe even in every single swf) in seperate swfs. You should mainly make swf's for elements which do not show up frequently in your movie. That is a way to decrease the total filesize of all swfs together, but it will also decrease the amount of survey. It's up to you.

LTrZ!
DamnGzM.

[Austin]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I came to the same conclusion regarding the load/unload movie function. It has worked for me I am happy to say. There are so many different ways to go about doing the same thing in Flash it can be a little tasking deciding which way to go, especially when each way has a certain advantage over the other. But load/unload has opened my eyes to new possibilities! Now I am just trying to find an efficient way of getting the back button in my movie to coincide with the back button on the browser so that when someone clicks the browser button they aren't sent all the way back to the beginning of the SWF. Of course the answer is to more than one HTML link to a swf but this can cause unwanted download times as well I fear...unless you make some compromises in what you really want to do, etc. etc. Oh well, one challenge leads to the next.

Thanks for the reply, I'm happy to know that Flashkit has such a friendly community!