What you see above is fhe Flash 5 Layout. Inside it is where you make ur awesome games and movies! The language of flash is called Actionscript. If you understand Liberty Basic it shouldn't be to hard to understand Actionscripts basics. With Flash you can do virtually anything. You just have to know how to do it. So, first with the basics. Everything that you want to do anything has to be a symbol. So first draw something and the click insert<convert to symbol. Now it has a blue box around it. To name the symbol, click on it and in the little instance box click on name and give it a title.

 

Syntax - Syntax is the code. Another programming cool, in your face, your not a programmer term for code.

 

Code -  Code is all the words that programming consists of. It's a set of instructions for a computer to follow. Also known as syntax.  A computer is a stupid hunk of metal that cant think. The only thing it can do is follow instructions. (code)

 

Variable -  A letter or word containing data that may change. For example, Score is a variable. Variables can be edited. One way is to do something like this. Health = Health - Damage. - Now Damage is also a variable and you are subtracting Damage (lets say Damage's value is 15) from Health (lets say 100)

Now Health = 85. Yay!

 

Symbol -  In Flash a Symbol is something that has been converted to a symbol and can therefore be animated and called from the library and can be duplicated and basically anything that does anything has to be a symbol. So remember kids, Always convert to a symbol and brush ur teeth and don't talk to strangers.

 

Properties -  Properties are the characteristics of a symbol, for example -

Width, Height, Xposition, Yposition, Alpha, Rotation and Visible. Those are all properties. There are many more though.

 

Actionscript -  That is the name for the Programming language in Flash. All *Code* has to have *Syntax* That works in *Actionscript*. Did u get that?

 

Layer -  Every Layer is on the timeline. They are stacked on top of each other. An objest on the top layer will cover something on the bottom layer. Think of it as a top-down view.

 

Onion Skinning -  Onion skinning is a technique used to create *Frame By Frame* Animation.  It creates a shadow in the previous position of an object.

 

Motion Tweening -  Motion Tweening is where a symbol has a starting position and you give it and ending postion farther down the timeline and flash will automatically fill in the animation. Its REALLY EASY!

 

Frame By Frame -  Frame by Frame is like slide show animation. It contains one image, that follows by another depending on the Frames Per Second (FPS). Frame by frame animation takes more time and more skill. Instead of tweening you have to draw EVERY SINGLE FRAME by hand.

 

Frames Per Second - Frames Per Second (FPS) is the speed of the frames showing. Its just like the speed of a slide show. Do you get it? If the FPS is set to 9, the movie that you have will be slower and if you set the FPS to a higher level, the speed will increase. TIP: Usually, have your FPS set to 12. That's what we do.

 

Text Types - Dynamic Text is the name of the text that is a variable. You can also have Static Text which is just plain ol' text or Input Text which is a variable but also you have the ability to input your own text.

 

Frame Labels - Frame Lables are the name of the frame. If you have a really big game or a movie or something, instead of clicking on a command button with the syntax written like on release { gotoAndPlay(2); } you can label the frame in the instance box as " game " or whatever and instead of going to frame 2 you can say

on release { gotoAndPlay("game"); } . Frame Labeling makes command button actionscript and gotos' so much easier.

 

Audio Streaming - This makes it so much easier when you are experiencing with pre- loaders and audio. Instead of loading the whole game just to hear five seconds of "lalalalalalalala" you can stream the audio so that you really don't have to sit there and wait for "lalalalalalalala" ok? You have to put the sound on a seperate Layer in order to Stream it.

 

Pre- Loaders - Ahhh....you gotta love 'em. Pre- Loaders are everyone's heros. If you don't have pre-loaders, the thing you are trying to load is going to be loading, but your gonna be sitting there watching a blank white screen until it loads. Instead have a pre-loader and then watch a bar load to its max then you can watch! Or watch percentage(%)! Or experiment with complicated pre- loaders which one ball may contain a limit of 10% and then there may be 10 balls to fulfill your happiness of watching things load!

 

 

 

First of all, anything that you want to be tweened Has to be converted to a symbol. So draw a circle. Convert it to a symbol. Right click farther down the timeline about 10 frames and click "Insert Keyframe" Then right click the frames between and click Insert Motion Tween. Flash will automaticaly fill in all those frames in the middle for you. Watch the tutorial for a better idea of what im talking about.

 

There are a couple different things you can do with sound in Flash. To import music into your movie or game. Click on File<Import and then find the file you are looking for. Flash can only handle certain file types. A typical song is 3,000 to 6,000 Kb (Kilobytes). One song alone can be to much for a computer to load off the internet so try to use th littlest amount of kilobytes possible. If you import an entire song into flash and then have it play for about 10 seconds in the intro. The person watching it has to wait for his computer to load the whole song and then listen to 10 seconds of it. IF the song is set on "Event or Start". If the song is set on "Stream" The user will only have to load as much of the song as hes going to hear. I ALWAYS set my music on Stream. To put music into a movie, Make a brand new layer on the very top and click on whatever frame you want it to start playing on. Then Click on the bottom properties box and under Frame<Sound select the Sound/Music you imported. Voila You Have Music.

 

Actionscript is very easy to learn the basics of but very hard to master. (We are still at the "basics" stage). Code is written a little differently. It is much simpler to use because instead of typing it out, u just click on the actionscript toolbox and find what you need. There are many different things actionscript can do. Basicaly its infinite possiblities. Ok Now for some basic Flash Code. This code will jump the movie/game to a different frame in your movie/game.

 

gotoandplay ("scene1", 5)

 

Now it is going to jump to scene1 frame 5. Get it? Now to put that in your movie, right click on the frame in the timeline where you want it to jump from and click "actions". When the actions window opens up, click on goto in the toolbox. It will do the rest for you. You just type in what frame you want it to jump to.

 

To save your work, Click File<Save As in the upper left hand corner. Give it a name. It will be saved as a .fla extension. This means the format will be re-writable. You can change it. When you hit Control<Test to play the movie it will export the .swf into the same folder you saved the .fla into. A .swf is JUST the movie/game. You cannot edit a .swf. U can only open it and play it. Dont worry though. Every time you save your work it will re-write the .swf. So it will be updated. Just dont forget to save.

Lets get cracking.

Ok once you get it im sure you know how to use the tools. You know paint brush, circles all that.

How to click and drag an object?

 

Ok make a circle. Convert it to a symbol. (You should know how if u watched the tutorial). Name the circle "circle" in the properties box NOT THE SYMBOL BOX. Double click the circle then Convert it to a symbol and in the window that pops up Click the check box by Button and push ok. then right click the circle and go to Actions and then copy and paste this code(man....if you dont know how to copy and paste, dont want to learn how to program geez):

on (press) {
    startDrag ("/circle/", true);
}
on (release) {
    stopDrag ();
}
 do you kinda understand it? well "on press" means that the action will be performed when you push but dont release the left click on the mouse. and the action is "startDrag". well it means that it will start to drag the object of course. the "true" means that when you click it will lock the mouse to the center of the center, and the other branch { }which contains in the "on release" (meaning that when you release the click of the mouse) is the "stopDrag" so that when you let go of the click it will stop. Simple! Click the circle below and drag it for a demonstration