Week two

 This week was started off by leads from our group, including me as the lead artist, pitching a game concept we had come up with to Sioban and David. After presenting our ideas we recieved feedback and were expected to follow up on that feedback and produce needed results.

 In the following lessons I was re-introduced to flash, and spanning the week I was taught programming tools such as how to make an object (movie clip) scale larger on the screen (scene) i will display how this is done;

Firstly the object must be imported to the library by selecting 'Import to library', finding the object and clicking 'Import'

Following this the user must find the object by clicking the 'library' tab on the far top-right of the screen.

Upon doing so the user can then drag the object onto the "scene" making it visable and editable.

Once the object is on the "scene" the user must right click and select 'convert to symbol' and make sure 'movie clip' is selected from the drop down list.
note: The user can also use a shortcut to convert the object to a symbol, they can do this by pressing the F8 key.

After converting the object it must be given an instance name found within the object tab on the far right, it is reccomended to use names such as 'ball_mc' so it is easily identifiable that 'ball' is a movieclip, then a new layer is created to be used for 'action scripting' which is where the user will write the code to program the object to move along the screen.

When the action script layer is created the user must next open action script by right clicking a frame (found below the scene) and selecting action script.

Finally when action script is open the user can identify the 'movie clips' on the 'stage' by letting flash know it is a variable, by typing var. and the movie clips name, once done the user can go on to type the code to move the object. The following is an example of exactly how code is written to make an object scale larger.

ball_mc.scaleX = 3

This will make the horizontal scale of the object three times its original size, to make the objext smaller the user would simply put 0.1 etc making the object one tenth of its original size, if the user wishes to change the vertical scaling they need only replace 'X' with 'Y'.

 I also found that multiple other things can be done to make an object rotate, slowly dissapear, increase in height and width all follow a very similar rule to this and are far easier to undertake after performing a task such as this one.

The key things i have taken away from this unit this week is learning the various shortcuts in flash but mostly gaining much more of an understanding for action script and simple coding, I was also very greatful to david for recommending 'Animation With Scripting For Adobe Flash Professional CS5 Studio Techniques' a book that i will be very sure to get a hold of and read.

Signed: Arron Pomeroy