Since i finally got a whole day to fool around, i decided to start learning about the new BitmapData class in flash8.

I’ve only just begun, and i’m not really sure if what i worked on today is of any benefit in the end, but i like it.

I set out to eliminate having to create a ton of sprite movieclips in the library for games, and instead store the data from an external spritesheet and just have movieclips change their bitmap data when states change.

After i banged my desk and racked my brain for an hour to find out why i couldn’t load a bitmap, i decided to actually read the help files instead of going on what i thought should happen     

Turns out attachBitmap is not like loadMovie, but more like attachMovie (i know it makes sense, but it was early) – you can only attach a bitmap if it’s in the library. So i created a class that would load the image, creates a new BitmapData object and draws to it from the loaded movieclip. then it removes that movieclip, passes the new bitmap object onto a character movieclip which has coordinates of how to “cut-up” the bitmap.

So, basically when states change (like if the user presses SPACE for jump) those coordinates are fed the BitmapData’s copyPixel function.

I just tried it with the “still” and “jump” states, and it seems to be working pretty well. it will be interesting to see what comes of trying to incorporate a walk-cycle into it.

Whether or not this is the best thing to do for a game, i’m not quite sure… Whether it takes less time than making movieclips, i don’t know… but it’s another possibility.

As a side note, the png this swf loads was created by using Patrick Mineault’s pixel tools (glad they still work in 8!) in the Flash IDE then exported.

Posted in Flash, Flash8.