Question

I’ve struck a rather odd problem in my flash game. I get a “Error #1009: Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.” error in the following block of code:

    public function createHero()
    {
        hero = new Object();
        hero.mc = gamelevel.hero;
        hero.dx = 0.0;
        hero.dy = 0.0;
        hero.inAir = false;
        hero.direction = 1;
        hero.animstate = "stand";
        hero.walkAnimation = new Array(2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8);
        hero.animstep = 2;
        hero.jump = false;
        hero.moveLeft = false;
        hero.moveRight = false;
        hero.jumpSpeed = 0.8;
        hero.walkSpeed = 0.15;
        hero.width = 64.0;
        hero.height = 96.0;
        hero.startX = hero.mc.x;
        hero.startY = hero.mc.y;
        hero.profile = "technology";
        hero.ability = "robot";
        hero.activePhotoFrame = false;
    }

Using the debugger I’ve narrowed the error down to “hero.mc = gamelevel.hero;”. I tried figuring out if hero.mc or gamelevel.hero was the culprit by using a test object.

    testObject = gamelevel; //worked perfectly fine
    testObject = gamelevel.hero; //gave the error
    testObject.mc = gamelevel; //also gave the error
    testObject.mc = gamelevel.hero; //gave the same error as well

I don’t understand what the problem is.
For clarification “gamelevel” is the instance name of a movieclip containing another movieclip with the instance name “hero”

The problem isn’t limited to the hero object. If I comment it out I get the error with any other object assigning gamelevel.something to a mc property.

What makes it stranger is that this worked perfectly fine before.

If any other information is required, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Answer 1

Turned out one of the images was corrupted…