Adding Actionscript freezes flash animation

[brianheagney]

Okay, so after posting all the "preloading" .flv / .swf questions, and after getting my answers, I decided to go ahead and write out the scripts in the first few frames to actually preload the .swfs for later...

I thought I'd start out simple, and I've found that I have no idea what I'm doing.

I tried to something very basic using actionscript and it freezes up the animation.

When I use the built-in "go to key frame..." tool, and specify to go to frame 6, and play, the animation works fine.

When I use the Actionscript interface and actually write out:
"gotoAndPlay(6);", then the animation get's stuck and only plays the first frame.

Not sure how I can screw up so quickly. Is there something I'm not understanding about actionscript?

[brianheagney]

Okay, here's the problem a little more explained:

No matter what frame number I have in the actionscript, it always goes back to frame 1.

No matter what.

I've spent hours trying to get the actionscript to go to a frame other than 1, and nothing's working...

I've also tried:

stop();
gotoAndPlay(6);

and

MovieClip(root).gotoAndPlay(6);

and

_root.gotoAndPlay(6);

and probably others.

[brianheagney]

What??
Okay, I know I'm not supposed to answer my own question because it looks bad on my part, but I don't want anyone to waste their time:

I just renamed the frames, and instead of using the number, I used the frame name, and it worked!

Now, why, I wonder, didn't the numerical way work?

[Bob Hartzell]

Because 6 in the code corresponds to 6 tween frames. The swf has no concept of key frames unless they are labelled.

[brianheagney]

Wow, really? Thanks Bob.

every flash tutorial I have seen that uses "gotoAndPlay()" has had a numeral (like "6") placed within the parentheses, and so far I have not seen any reference to the fact that the frames aren't by default named using their numbers.

Thanks for the clarification.