setting up frame by frame menu navigation vs. All Code

Question

I am All Programmer when it comes to anything including flash. I got into making games not to long ago and some people use frames to navigate from the main menu to the game screen and so on (which I have no idea how to do). and some people encapsulate the game inside of a class and call it from the document class and add and remove it when please.

I am just curious of what is the best practices when it comes to this and what is most beneficial. What do the pros do.

Answer 1

If you start with Flash, just the IDE and then learn how to code, navigating through frames makes sense as it's dead easy to understand/implement.

The only advantage I can think of is that objects are always there, so when you're going from one frame to another, once the objects are instantiated, they'll be there for you, so no need to remove everything, add everything again.

I'm guessing pros like Keith Peters code there views and menus 100%. Once you make your nice little game engine ( with menus and screens) ready to be reused (Asobu), the timeline seems a bit pointless for switching views. The PushButtonEngine looks great from this perspective.

If you're working with a designer, and he/she is designing the screens and the timeline navigation makes more sense for him/her while prototyping, I'm guessing there is a middle ground. As long as each screen is a MovieClip on it's own, inside the main timeline, you can set a Class for each screen MovieClip and carry on from there. If you need something to declare stage instances for you, I wrote a tiny extension that could give hand with that. Then you can carry on with the logic in your preffered IDE.

My guess is for quick additive button bashing short indy games the timeline will do just fine. If you're planning to reuse a basic engine and make more complex games, on the long run, actionscript will prove the right decision. Basic rule of thumb: Don't over complicate things without reason.

Answer 2

Using the timeline is generally regarded as not best practise. You will tend to find designers who start programming tend to use the timeline a lot as thats what they are used to. Also programmers who started off with AS1 or AS2 tend to have bad habbits. If something is worth doing its worth doing properly.

The problem with using the timeline is managing your variable states. Any variables that are declared in a frame will be lost if you then move to another frame (except for the first frame). To demonstrate imagine this basic example:

On the first frame there is an options button that when clicked goes to another frame "options". This options frame has a check button and also declares another object. It also has a button to return to the main menu. This is what it looks like when the compiler has generated it into code:

package DemoAvoid_fla
{
    import fl.controls.*;
    import flash.display.*;
    import flash.events.*;

    dynamic public class MainTimeline extends MovieClip
    {
        public var btnOptions:SimpleButton;
        public var chkHints:CheckBox;
        public var myWorld:Object;
        public var btnReturnToMainMenu:SimpleButton;
        public var declareSomeInstace:Object;

        public function MainTimeline()
        {
            addFrameScript(0, this.frame1, 1, this.frame2);
            return;
        }// end function

        public function onOptionsClick(event:MouseEvent) : void
        {
            gotoAndStop("options");
            return;
        }// end function

        function frame1()
        {
            stop();
            this.myWorld = new Object();
            this.btnOptions.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, this.onOptionsClick);
            return;
        }// end function

        public function onReturnToMainMenu(event:Event) : void
        {
            gotoAndStop("mainMenu");
            return;
        }// end function

        function frame2()
        {
            stop();
            this.chkHints.addEventListener(Event.CHANGE, this.onHintsChange);
            this.btnReturnToMainMenu.addEventListene(MouseEvent.CLICK,this.onReturnToMainMenu);
            this.declareSomeInstace = new Object();
            return;
        }// end function

        public function onHintsChange(event:Event) : void
        {
            var _loc_2:* = event.target.selected;
            trace(_loc_2);
            return;
        }// end function

    }
}

Now this is where the problem lies. If you were to navigate to the options page then return to the main menu you would end up resetting your variable state as you now create a new instance of my world (and memory usuage goes up as the garbage collector won't be instant). You have now also lost your instance in your options page.

My coding style for menus is to create each screen as a movieclip. Then place each movieclip on the first frame but on different layers. I then hide/show the layer I want. Its also easy to control from external classes and just as quick to design and avoids any of the pitfalls that I mentioned :)