This
lesson will demonstrate how to create a compass that always points in the direction
of the mouse cursor. The script may be confusing if you don't know trigonometry
but it's actually short and easy to apply. In fact I knew very little about
trig before making the compass and would recommend that you spend some time
researching the subject before attempting to create this project. The final
result will be well worth it plus the knowledge you'll gain. Thanx to my friend
Dave Dutt for telling me about the inverse sine function (asin). This lesson
requires only two movie clips: a compass with an arrow to point at the cursor
and a controller, which can look like anything you want (mine is just some static
text, "Control Clip"). Important! When
creating the compass the graphic within the move clip must point directly to
the right. You cannot just rotate the clip to the right after it has been made.
Also, the rotation axis of the compass needs to be centered on the crosshairs
of the movie clip.