Question

I’ve been making a “slideshow” where 4 images are animated in random order.

To prevent multiple animations to one image for example 3 times successively, I’ve write a little logic.

My problem : after a few times all the 4 images are animated (after the query ‘array’ is cleared the second time I think), the timer goes crazy and trace() random numbers in a high sequence rate without to animate the images, with would look creepy I think.

My code :

var myTimer:Timer = new Timer(2500);
myTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, animate);
myTimer.start();

var array:Array = new Array();
var lastNum:int;

function animate(e:TimerEvent):void {
    var num:int = getRandomNumber( 1, 4 );
    trace( num );
    if( array.indexOf( num ) < 0 && num != lastNum ) {
        myTimer.delay = 2500;
        if( num == 1 ) {
            sideImg_start_1.play(); // comment this*
        } else if( num == 2 ) {
            sideImg_start_2.play(); // comment this*
        } else if( num == 3 ) {
            sideImg_start_3.play(); // comment this*
        } else if( num == 4 ) {
            sideImg_start_4.play(); // comment this*
        }
        array.push( num );
        if( array.length == 4 ) {
            array.splice(0, 4);
            trace(" array cleared - " + array.length);
            lastNum = num;
        }
    } else {
        myTimer.delay = 100; // I've also tryed so make a higher delay
                // like 500 but its the same problem...
    }
}

function getRandomNumber( min:int, max:int ):int {
    return Math.floor( Math.random() * ( 1 + max - min ) ) + min;
}

stop();

So guys, thanks for all your answers and your help 😀

UPDATE:

First I’ve tried to simply call the ‘animate()’ function instead of defining a higher speed to the timer to call the next number fast, without to loose time, which would make the random animation look weird.

I’ve used animate(null); instead of myTimer.delay = 100; before, but then I was getting a STACKOVERFLOW error 😛

Answer 1

For example if your lastNum is equal to 4, and you have 1,2 and 3 as new values, than you will end up with an infinite loop,

because you can’t insert 4 (because it’s equal to the lastNum) and you can’t insert 1,2 or 3 because they are already in the array.

What you need to do is:

if (array.length == 4) {
    array.splice(0, 4);
    lastNum = num;
} else {
    lastNum = 0; //<-- HERE
}