Simply Tell Target

Simply Tell Target

This tutorial is designed to give you a basic idea of the tell target action and take you through a simple example.  

What is it?

Tell target can be used to influence objects on a different timeline.  You can find a different timeline, in a movie clip or in a totally different SWF.  For this example I am going to use a simple movie clip. 

Lets Go!

First, as always, start with a new movie.  Name layer one "Movie Clip".  Now create a movie clip object with an animation in. 

Creating a movie clip

The easiest way to do this, is to first create an image (say a circle), in frame 1.  Now select the image, by click and drag, and go to the insert menu.   Here you should find convert to symbol, notice the shortcut is F8, click it.  A new window appears, here select movie clip and name it test.  Press OK.  Now, by double clicking the movie clip you will enter a new time line.  Here you can animate it.  For animation see here.

Setting up the movie clip

Inside the movie clip, just place a stop command at frame one.  This is because our tell target action will be play. 

One last thing.  Tell target uses an instance name to locate the object you wish to effect.  So we have to give the movie clip a name, in the instance window.  Use the windows menu to display the instance panel if you can't see it.  Here you will be able to clearly see a space to put a name.  Name the clip "test" here.

Crearting a button

Next insert a new layer and name it button.  On this layer create a button, (As above only select button).  The buttons animation is not important, although if you wish you can apply a over, down and press effect now. 

With a button of some sort created on the new layer, now named "Button" we can start to script the button. 

Tell Target Script

Right click the button and select actions.  This will bring up the actions window.  To the left you will see a list of all the actions, sorted into categories.  Click the "basic" Category.  A list drops down or is already displayed.  At the bottom of this list, find on mouse event and click it.  A line of script appears in the right hand pane.  At the bottom of this window you can choose which mouse button the action is performed on.  "Release" is fine for now. 

Next, also on the basic list, choose the "tell target" action.  At the bottom of the window you will see a text box labelled "target".  Type "test" in here and select "Expression" which is just right of the text box.  From here, any action you specify will be performed on the movie clip.  Select Play now, you can also find this on the basic menu. 

Running the movie

Test the movie now.  At first nothing should happen (Because we stopped the movie clip in frame 1).  Now press the button you created.  The animation you created should run because we told the target to play. 

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