Building the Project

This section discusses the creation of the art and assets for the interface and then talks about assembling the game's mechanics.

In the tradition of character animation, the alien puppet is constructed of independent Movie Clips for each body part for maximum flexibility. (Figure 31-2 shows the timeline of the headClip symbol in the View Assets ð hangMan ð hangMan elements folder of the document's Library panel.) Each Movie Clip in the hangMan elements folder is made of nine frames used for the nine rounds of the game. Each frame displays the same Movie Clip symbol with different advanced color effects. You can view the color settings by selecting the Movie Clip symbol, opening the Property inspector, and clicking the Settings button to the right of the Color menu. Note that by using the color effects, we can use the same symbols over and over, keep our file small, and still develop a very large visual vocabulary.

Figure 31-2: The headClip symbol uses the head symbol and displays it with different color schemes. This timeline is shown with the Preview in Context option enabled in the Timeline window.

When the game is a loss and the alien is complete, an animation is triggered. This animation uses the beamClip symbol and the BlurFader component. Both of these symbols are attached dynamically in ActionScript, which you'll see later in this chapter.