Inquiring Minds Want to Know

[hohriver]

Okay. A week has passed while I have struggled to get a handle on building a simple preloader for a Flash 4 movie.
Several persons have attempted to help, including davdesign and oldnewbie, prominent participants in this forum. I haven't yet had the opportunity to implement davdesign's most recent example, but I soon will. I am grateful for everyone's assistance.

But here's the thing: along the route, I used (5) books on Flash, the online help, the CD Rom program help, Flashkit.com's tutorials, Flashplanet.com's tutorials, Flashlite.com's tutorials—you get the idea. And you know what I discovered? THEY ARE ALL MARKEDLY DIFFERENT!! No
two come at this technique from the same angle. The ActionScripting is dramatically varied, from the oversimplistic efforts of some prepubescent geek, to the advanced modeled-on-Flash-5 ActionScripting davdesign offers up.

How come there are so many apparent different ways to do the same thing? And since many of these models did not work when I tried to use them with my own preloader effort,
why don't they all work the same?

A preloader is a preloader is a preloader: the goal is the same, so why isn't the technique and process? Why aren't there steps "1, 2, 3,4..." or however many there are that may be applied to any preload sequence movie? Sure, I understand that some preloader animations may be longer or more complex than others, but besides that? Does anyone want to take a shot at resolving this unsettling all-over-the-board 'process'? And let's see if any two answers come back alike, while we're at it.....

 

[oldnewbie]

Your statement would hold true for all the other ways of doing all the other stuff in Flash also. Using several scenes in one movie rather then loading several other movies on other levels or empty clips, as an example.
Why? Can't really say! But I like the freedom! Some methods could end up being more effective on some occasions... But who's to know if you don't all try them out and compare them!

As for preloaders, once you've understood the basics, it usually very easy to improvise and create new ones.
It's a just 2 frame loop that keeps looping until some particular condition is met... In this case, the condition being that so many bytes have been loaded. That's it!

B-)

 

[davdesign]

I don't know what the books have to offer as far as preloaders go because I only bought my first flash book a couple of months ago. As far as tutorials go, again I haven't tried any. But, as oldnewbie says, it's basic logic: in order for one thing to happen another must be 'true'.

I reckon the most common mistakes made by people are the placement of their preloader in relation to the rest of their movie (ie: mixing the two), forgetting the loop, or forgetting the goto action when the loading is over.

dave dave@davdesign.co.uk

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

 

[katiekat]

I must say, the fact that there are 4,000,000 different ways to do things in flash is one of my favorite things about it. I personally would much rather have my choice of how to do things. Flexable! I like flexable! Although it does make it a bit harder to learn with no concrete steps to follow, it's worth it in the end. I like tutorials. I had a hell of a time with the preloaders too, when I first started. Here's the one that taught me the basics. Maybe this will help. Good Luck!! :-D

http://www.designsbymark.com/flashtut/ft_perpreloader.shtml

Holy tek-tips batman!:-0