Falling Snow - Page 7

No two alike? Well, not quite...

Of course we can't make every snowflake look completely different unless we had some sort of nifty random-snowflake-drawing script. (Which is way beyond me.) But we can vary the flakes somewhat.

Double-click the "flake" movie clip to edit it. (I told you we'd use it.) From the Edit menu, choose Copy Frames. Select the empty Frame 2 and choose Paste Frames.Now go to the text box and type a different snowflake character. (I leave it to you to find other characters. Zapf Dingbats has several. You can also use bitmap pictures of snowflakes, as long as they have transparent backgrounds. Or you can draw your own snowflakes, if you like.)

Repeat this procedure, placing a different flake in each frame. When you're done, close the "flake" clip and go back to the "fall" clip by clicking "fall" above the movie stage area.

For our example, we're going to assume you have 6 different snowflake shapes to choose from. In frames 1 and 2, add the following lines of code at the beginning:

shape = Random(6) + 1;
flakey.gotoAndStop(shape);

If you have a different number of snowflake shapes, use that number above instead of 6.

And there you have it! Drifting, falling snow, in a few easy steps.