Scripting Additional Instances

See the movie on the right=>
and download the FLA here

This will show you how you can insert additional instances of a movie clip in your movie by a simple action script.

1. Create a movie clip of your choice. The clip we used was a fly following a motion guide.

2. Place your movie clip on the stage.

3. Name your instance on the instance panel fly_1

4. Draw a circle, highlight it,  and convert it to a symbol that has properties of a button.

5. We are now ready to script multiple instances! Click on your button to highlight it.

6. On the actions panel,

• Click the + => actions => evaluate.
• Click the target button on the action panel and find the fly_1, click ok.
• Click + => objects => Movie clips => duplicateMovieClip
• name the new clip "fly_"+"x" and Select a new level x, so that it will look like this:
  "fly_"+"x", x . Make sure you have the "" where you need them.
• Click the + => actions => evaluate
• To change the value of X, Type in x++

Your script should look like this:

on (release) { _root.fly_1.duplicateMovieClip ("fly_"+"x", x ); x++; }

7. Play your movie. You will see that you will increase the number of movie clips by 1 with each click of the button. With this example, the fly_ clips are loaded all at the same _x, _y coordinates. You can change these by adding a setproperty script to this onrelease statement. SetProperty was covered 2 weeks ago in this tutorial. You will use the property of _x and then _y to adjust the coordinates for starting position. You may want to try setting a random number between 0 and 500 for this and your flys will be all over.

8. Setting different positions

Try this script on a second button:

on (release) { _root.fly_1.duplicateMovieClip ("fly_"+"x", x ); setProperty ("fly_"+"x", _x, random(500)); setProperty ("fly_"+"x", _y, random(500)); x++; }

9.  The same could be done with _xscale, _yscale, rotation, and many other properties. Have fun experimenting with your fly clip!