Flash MX 2004 Games : Art to ActionScript

Chapter 9: Using loops
Two examples to help you understand
As usual, examples are the best way to learn. Boot up your machine and open ‘Examples\
Chapter09\Loops01.fla’. Here is a very simple program that uses the Bucket from the previous
chapter to show how loops can work.
Figure 9.1 The Loops01 project
Figure 9.1 shows the ‘Loops01’ project in development. There are just five layers; any frame
actions are placed on the usual ‘Control’ layer. There is only one frame in this timeline, and the
action for frame one is just to set a global variable ‘numBuckets’ to the value 1, since we have just
one bucket on screen, then the second line is the ActionScript command ‘stop( )’.
numBuckets = 1;
stop();
The code to move and update the Bucket is all inside the Bucket clip or as an ‘onClipEvent’
action for the clip. If you are interested then click on the Bucket and view the Action panel by
pressing F9. The code we are interested in can be found by clicking the ‘Duplicate’ button and
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