frame labels giving me no love

Last week a friend showed me how to call a MC at a specific frame by using frame labels. The example he used was a ball changing shape. So in the main timeline I had the ball bouncing in one layer and then in action script I was calling the shapes I needed like so ball.gotoAndPlay("squish")
ball.gotoAndPlay("stretch")
ball.gotoAndPlay("flat")
ball was the name of the MC and labels were squish, stretch, flat, etc..

Worked great. Problem is I can't reproduce it. For some reason my movie ignores the actionscript and just plays the clip that is in the score. Does anybody know what I'm missing here?

Newbie trying not to be so New
- B

Frame labels are touchy. You 'must' make them 'before' runtime. That means, you have to name them before you write the script to use them or test movie. You could also try adding _root.ball.gotoAndPlay etc.

If I'm understanding you correctly all the frame names are in place. I then placed the MC in the main score and wrote the calls in the actions layer. I also double checked all the bone head stuff like mispellings and the like. Still no love! _root. didn't do the trick either.

- B

Hey your on all the time Iaskwhy! Helping the masses!

Did you add a stop(); to the first frame of the ball MC?

sir, yes sir!

Well, without seeing the fla, it's hard to visualize what your doing. One more suggestion, try a gotoAndStop. If your movie is playing right through, that may be the problem. You may even have to add a stop at each label frame. Hard to tell without seeing it.

let me fool with it tonight. If I can't get it I'll post again tomorrow with a cut down version of the fla. (don't want to put the whole honkin project up!)

Thanks askwhy!

Well I just got schooled. Since the ball MC had the name "ball" I thought that was how I was calling it in the actionscript. Little did I know "ball" was also an instance name. Something I had forgotten to do on my project. So of course when it would reach frame one of the MC in the score it would just stop.

Chant it with me now... NEWBIE NEWBIE NEWBIE

Seriously thanks for all the help.

- B