Flash MX 2004 Games : Art to ActionScript

Chapter 17: Platformers
array, ‘dynamicClips’, so that at a later stage you will be able to remove it. In order to add a new
element to an array, simply use ‘push’.
dynamicClips.push(newclip); //newclip is the name that will be stored
Suppose that when the cat lands on a certain box you want to set off an animation that includes
a fish power-up token. First you create the graphics and animation and store this in a clip that is
off-screen. Make sure that the animation in the clip stops at the end rather than loops back and
have it set a flag at the start, something like ‘clipFinished=false’ which is set to true at the end
of the animation. On the main ticking loop for the game, either a clip event or a main timeline
loop, run through every clip in the dynamicClips array. If you find that the variable ‘clipFinished’
is true then remove the clip using:
removeMovieClip(clipname);
then update the array so that it is not removed again. A single element can be removed from
an array using the ‘splice’ method. This method takes the starting index in the array and then
a parameter that defines how many elements to delete. The same method can take a third and
subsequent parameters; these subsequent parameters define elements that are added to the array.
These parameters are optional and when missing, the method operates just by removing elements
rather than removing and replacing.
If the second parameter is missing then the array is deleted from the number index indicated by
the first parameter up to the end of the array.
for (i=0; i