Decreasing health

I'm trying to make a game where I have a "ball" object i move around with the cursor and dodge "block" objects. I have a variable called health and I want to make it so whenever the ball is hit by the block, the ball loses 1 health. here's the code.

health = 10;

if(_root.ball.hitTest(_root.block)){
health--;
}

nothing at all happens when the block hits the ball.

Anyone know what the problem is?

First of try this instead,

Actionscript Code:

if(_root.block.hitTest(_root.ball)) { 
    health--;
}

ty, works just fine now. Now I just need to know how to keep the health number from going into the negatives :P

instead of health--; use a conditional:

Actionscript Code:

health>0?health--:health=0;

That will make sure health doesn't go below 0.

gparis

That's quite nice,... could you explain? As in, what the "?" signify as well as the ":". Thanks.

'?' is if and ':' is else. Shorthand conditionnal for lazy programmers like myself.

gparis

Lazy?!! On the contrary... I think it's quite eloquent.