Flash MX 2004 Games : Art to ActionScript

Flash MX 2004 Games
The next step in the main game loop is to determine the player from each team that is nearest to
the ball. This is done using the function ‘nearestPlayer’. The function sets up the team name using
the passed in team number. Then for each of the five players in the team the x and y distance
to the ball is calculated. The actual distance to the ball is then the square root of the x distance
square plus the y distance square. This is just Pythagoras’s theorem about the sides of a triangle.
The square root function is actually quite a slow function to calculate and you could improve
this code by just calculating the squared distance, because we are only interested in the nearest
not the actual distance. If the loop is being run for the first time, namely i equals zero, then the
variables ‘player’ and ‘dist’ are set to the current values of ‘i’ and ‘balldist’ respectively. If the loop
is in the second or higher passes then the values for ‘player’ and ‘dist’ are only set if the ‘dist’
value is greater than the value for ‘balldist’ in the current pass. Finally the ‘Direction’ clip inside
the player’s clip is set if the current team is not the player’s team. The direction clip is an arrow
indicator showing the player’s direction and indicating to the player that this player has the ball
focus.
1 function nearestplayer(teamno){
2
3
var i, dist, dx, dy, name, player;
4 if (teamno==BLUE){
5 teamname = "Pitch.Blue";
6 }else{
7 teamname = "Pitch.Red";
8
9
}
10 for (i=0; i