need another pair of eyes

I've been working on a segment of code for the past few days now for a game, somethings wrong, but I can't tell what.

I have a line drawn between two mc's, and based on how the length of that line changes (it's rotated from mc2 to mc1), I want the distance between the two to change as well.

so...

mc2
|\
|..\c
|....\
|......\mc1

when "c" changes, mc1 should move accordingly.

What am I doing wrong?

Code:

---

        for (j; j<1; j++) {
        var a = mc1._y - foot2._y;
        var b = mc1._x - foot2._x;
        var c = Math.sqrt(a*a+b*b);
        }
        c = mc2._height;
        a = c*Math.sin(point);
        b = Math.sqrt(c*c-a*a);
        mc1._x = mc2._x+b;
        mc1._y = mc2._y+a;

---

-or-

can you tell me a better, entirely different way of doing this?

what exactly happens and what doesnt happen. Can you post the fla up here because i dont get whether you are using flash drawing API etc,etc.

I would, but it's about 125 kb to big, and that's after cutting down on not-neccisary stuff and compacting. sorry.

it's not done using a drawing api, it's done based on the changing height of a mc.

Code:

---

for (j; j<1; j++) {
var a = mc1._y - foot2._y;
var b = mc1._x - foot2._x;
var c = Math.sqrt(a*a+b*b);
mc2._height = c;
}

---

first part loops once, sets "a" and "b" = to the x/y distance between the first mc and anoother sort of base mc (foot2)

more code that I just changed in it recently makes mc2._height = c

Code:

---

c = mc2._height;
a = c*Math.sin(point);
b = Math.sqrt(c*c-a*a);
mc1._x = mc2._x+b;
mc1._y = mc2._y+a;

---

//EDIT: point is the angle that mc2 is pointed.

this is the part that's not working

it makes c = mc2._height so that when I change mc2 height, everything else changes

which is done by
a = c*Math.sin(point);
b = Math.sqrt(c*c-a*a);

tracing brings up stuff like:
c=775.45
a=0
b=775.45

then it moves mc1 to be equal to the x/y of mc2 + the changed x/y distance



obviously, there's something wrong with how "a" is calculated, but I'm at my wits end here.






EDITx2:
I discovered there was nothing wrong with the code I was looking at, the whole problem is that mc2 isn't rotating right...

Code:

---

MovieClip.prototype.pointAt = function(x,y) {
  var dx = x - this._x;        // distance to other object on x-axis
  var dy = y - this._y;        // distance on y-axis
  var dist = Math.sqrt(dx*dx + dy*dy); // true distance (using Pythagorean theorem)
  var angle;
  // figure out angle in radians (0- 2*PI)
  if (dy <0)
    angle = Math.PI*2-Math.acos(dx/dist);
  else
    angle = Math.acos(dx/dist);
  // convert to rotation value (angle in degrees or 0-360)
        this._rotation = angle*180/Math.PI;
}

---

I got this somewhere and I was using it, it worked for a while.

on mc2:

onClipEvent (enterFrame) {
this.pointAt(this._parent.mc1._x, this._parent.mc1._y);
}