By the end of this tutorial,
you'll be able to create a little movie that randomly
selects letters and stops on the letter you want it to:
Now not to scare you, a LOT
of actionscripting is involved in this project. I'll try
explaining what each line means so you don't get lost.
Now before jumping to the
directions, there some things you should know first. The
letters and various characters on a computer are determined
by a unique value. In other words, letters have a specific
number, or code. Since there is no way for flash to randomly
select letters, we're going to artifically make it happen.
By randomly selecting numbers, which flash can do, we can
use a function in flash called chr(number);
which transforms the number to its corresponding letter. number in that function is replaced by a certain
number pertaining to the specific letter. However, that
doesn't mean 1 = "A". Letter "A" actually starts with the
number 65. Do this: hold Alt, then type 65 on the keypad on
the right side of the keyboard, you should get the letter
"A". The numbers go in order from there. 66 = "B", 67 = "C",
etc. Lowercase letters start from the number 97.
With that in mind, lets
start:
First, create a Movie Clip
symbol and call it "letter1".
Next, select the text
tool, and create a box (within the symbol, of course).
Now, while the cursor is
still blinking look for the panel called "Text Options"
(Window > Panels > Text Options).
Select Dynamic Text from
the drop-down menu.
In the "Variable" box,
type in "letter2".
Change the font
accordingly if you'd like in the Character panel.
Now, type in any letter in
the textbox for reference.
Create a movie clip symbol
and call it "text".
With your library open,
drag "letter1" onto the symbol and center it.
Drag this symbol to the
stage.
Now for the
actionscripting: Right click "letter1" and choose Actions.
The Actions window will appear. Insert the script in the
following text box exactly as it's typed (copy and paste)
into your Actions window:
Ok, lets split this badboy
apart:
onClipEvent(load)
- this just contains the actions
to take place once the movie clip symbol is loaded
go = true;
- this sets variable "go" = true, a Boolean value. You'll
see why in a sec.
onClipEvent(enterFrame) - this is
where all the actions take place repeatedly as long as the
movie is still playing. The actions within this handler is
looped every time the MC is accessed. (you notice that a
movieclip symbol always loops itself unless a stop(); action
is given. so the actions here are looped as well)
if (go)
- referring to the "go" variable, this triggers whether or
not the proceeding actions will take place. The first time,
the actions will take place because "go" was given a true.
So flash reads this as "if go is true, do these actions. if
it's false, don't do these".
x = random(122);
- this gives variable x a random number from 0 to 122. 122
is lowercase z.
if ((x >= 65) and (x
<= 122)) - this sets up a range
for x, cause we only want letters A-Z and a-z, not anything
else. x must be greater than or equal to 65 because 65 is A;
likewise, must be less than or equal to 122 because 122 is
z.
this.letter2 = chr(x);
- this tells flash to make the dynamic textbox equal to the
letter it randomly chose from the steps above. "this" refers
to itself. the ".letter2" refers to the textbox within
itself.
if (x == [number])
- you want it to do these actions once it hits the letter
you want.
go = false;
- this sets go to false, which tells
flash to stop randomly choosing letters, since it's already
got it.
Now with that action in that
MC, hold CTRL and drag the symbol as many times as the
number of letters in the word or phrase you want to make.
Position the letters in a
line, if you'd like.
Go to each letter and change
[number] to the number corresponding to the letter
you want.
Finally, drag "text" to the
main stage and play!
If you don't happen to know
the ASCII code for every single letter, upper and lowercase,
in the alphabet, use the Flash utility below. Enter the
letter or number you would like the code for and press the
arrow. The corresponding ASCII number will be displayed.
Random
Letter Cycling
