Question

I’m aware there are tutorials online that cover how to make game menus and preloaders for AS3 flash games, but I’ve found that books are more in-depth for certain topics. Are there books with sections that cover the process of making a preloader and menus for an AS3 flash game?

My ultimate goal is to implement a preloader AND game menus without referring to the timeline.

specific book titles would be much appreciated, thanks.

Answer 1

Preloaders are a pretty easy topic to cover.

Here’s what you need to know:

1. root.loaderInfo – The LoaderInfo object associated with root
2. bytesLoaded
3. bytesTotal

The latter two being properties of LoaderInfo.

You’ll be able to use these two properties to work out a percentage that represents how much of the SWF has been loaded. Generally this would be handled in an ENTER_FRAME, like this:

var percent:Number = 0;

stage.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, _preload);
function _preload(e:Event):void
{
    percent = root.loaderInfo.bytesLoaded / root.loaderInfo.bytesTotal;

    if(percent >= 1)
    {
        // do stuff once preloader is complete such as gotoAndStop(2)

        stage.removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, _preload);
    }
}

You could work with ProgressEvent.PROGRESS if you wanted to as well, I’ve just preferred using ENTER_FRAME.