For Flash 8 and MX 2004. May not work in other versions.
This tutorial explains how to move a sprite on the screen with the arrow keys on the keyboard. It is aimed at beginners.
Step 1 Open a new Flash document.
Step 2 Make your sprite. It can be anything- a circle, a square, something more complex... whatever.
Step 3 Select all of your sprite and hit F8. Make sure it will be a movie clip, not a button or a graphic. It doesn't matter what it will be called.
Step 4 Click on your new movie clip and go into Actions (hit F9 if the Actions window is not already open.)
Step 5 Type in this code:
onClipEvent(enterFrame) { This tells Flash that the code inside the curly brackets { and } will need to be carried out at the beginning of every frame.
if(Key.isDown(Key.UP)) this._y-=3
This tells Flash that if the UP arrow key is pressed down, then it should change the y coordinate of the movie clip and reduce it by 3, hence moving the movie clip down 3 pixels.
This pattern of code is followed for these lines:
if(Key.isDown(Key.DOWN)) this._y+=3
if(Key.isDown(Key.LEFT)) this._x-=3
if(Key.isDown(Key.RIGHT)) this._x+=3
}
This ends the function and tells Flash that everything that needs to be executed at the beginning of every frame is already out there.
I'm a relative beginner to Flash; however, I've made a relatively good game already and I'm planning to learn more about Flash and ActionScript!
P.S. If you visit jogrammah.com, there is a customer support link on the bottom of the home page. Email me there, NOT at the email address provided!
Tutorials Home
Tutorials » Actionscripting
Move a sprite with the keyboard
