Can anyone tell me now this is done?

[myfavoritecritic]

when you mouse over the spider stuff comes out from the spider.
http://www.thanea.com/deimos/html/index.html

I've seen a couple sites that have the same feature but with diferent shapes.

how is this acomplished?

[jbum]

Here, I wrote you a little sample that does this kind of thing.

The scripts are all in frame 1. It assumes the existence of a button named button_mc and a library movie with an export symbol called beastie_mc (the little critters).

This is the code:

// The number of critters you want
_root.maxBeasties = 100;

// An invisible MC to hold them - sits underneath your button
beastieFld = _root.createEmptyMovieClip("beastFld", 10);

// This puts your button on top of all the critters
// the only reason we need beastieFld is so we can accomplish that easily - otherwise i'd just use _root.
beastieFld.swapDepths(button_mc);

// Roll over script for your button
button_mc.onRollOver = function()
{
	for (var i = 0; i < _root.maxBeasties; ++i)
	{
		var mc = beastieFld["bmc"+i];
		if (mc == undefined)
		{
			mc = beastieFld.attachMovie("beastie_mc", "bmc"+i, i+1);
			// 			mc._x = this._x;
			mc._y = this._y;
			mc.speed = 5 + random(5);
			mc.onEnterFrame = function ()
			{
				var dx = (this.tx - this._x);
				var dy = (this.ty - this._y);
				this._x += dx/this.speed;
				this._y += dy/this.speed;
				if (dx < 5 && dy < 5) {
					if (this.closing) {
						this.removeMovieClip();
					}
					else {
						this.tx = random(Stage.width);
						this.ty = random(Stage.height);
					}
				}
			}
		}
		mc.closing = false;
		mc._xscale = mc._yscale = 30;
		mc.tx = random(Stage.width);
		mc.ty = random(Stage.height);
	}
}

// Roll out script for your button
button_mc.onRollOut = function()
{
	for (var i = 0; i < _root.maxBeasties; ++i) {
		var mc = beastieFld["bmc"+i];
		if (mc != undefined) {
			mc.closing = true;
			mc.tx = this._x;
			mc.ty = this._y;
			mc.speed = 5;
		}
	}
}

The hard part with this kind of thing (aside from being able to do it at all) is controlling the movement - constraining it to the area of interest, and making the motion look the way you want.

For each critter, the variables this.tx and this.ty control where he's gonna go. I currently have them programmed to go all over the entire field.


- jbum