Question

As the title says, the file loads correctly but the loading screen only flashes up at the end.

The only thing being exported in frame 1 is the loader image, and that is extremely small.

Is it possible that there’s a queue of things being loaded and the loader image is at the bottom of that queue? Since that was one of the last things added to the project

Answer 1

If your preloader only shows up after the file has loaded, this means that you still have other objects being linked onto Frame 1. Flash is very picky about this, and it’s easy for things to be yanked onto Frame 1 regardless of your settings. When you compile, Flash builds a dependency graph to determine what items are needed on each frame. If it thinks an asset is needed earlier than the export frame setting, it will ignore the setting and push the asset onto that frame. In particular, any class that your document class directly references will be automatically yanked onto frame 1.

Checking “Generate size report” in File, Publish Settings, Flash can help you see how much data is being exported onto Frame 1. Here are some tips to ensure that everything is linked onto the proper frame:

• In Publish Settings, Flash, ActionScript Settings, make sure that “Export frame for classes” is set to 2 or higher.
• Ensure that library symbols say “Export on frame 2” in their linkage properties. Older versions of Flash may export them on frame 1, regardless of the class export frame. In this case, you’ll have to do the oldschool method of unchecking the “Export on frame 1” option, and manually dragging these symbols onto the timeline on frame 2.
• Do not directly reference classes from your document class or on the main timeline. The Document class and all the assets it references are always placed on frame 1. Anytime you do var f : MyClass; in your document class or on the root timeline, then you are referencing MyClass, and Flash will automatically yank it onto frame 1.

To avoid directly referencing your main app class in your preloader, you want to instantiate it indirectly, using something like this:

var gameClass : Class = flash.utils.getDefinitionByName("Game") as Class;
var game : Sprite = new gameClass();

In this case, your Preloader becomes the document class, and indirectly creates the Game class when the SWF has loaded. This avoids any direct references to Game and its content.