AS3 - types and classes

Question

I'm not exactly sure but i'm guessing my problem has to do with how i'm declaring my variables.

Is the below code legal in AS3?

    var fish1:Fish = new Fish;
    var fish2:Fish = new Fish;
    var fish3:Fish = new Fish;
    var fish4:Fish = new Fish;
    addChild(fish1);
    addChild(fish2);
    addChild(fish3);
    addChild(fish4);
    fish1.x = 0;
    fish2.x = 150;
    fish3.x = 300;
    fish4.x = 450;

i'm getting compiler errors for each line of addChild saying:

Main.as, Line 14 1180: Call to a possibly undefined method addChild. Main.as, Line 14 1120: Access of undefined property fish3.

and for every line where i'm specifying the x coordinates of my fish i'm getting a compiler error saying

Main.as, Line 15 1120: Access of undefined property fish4.

the fish variables are of type Fish and I've defined them in my library in my .fla file. Thank you in advanced!

Amy Blankenship Amy Blankenship · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-29T19:48:49

Your Class needs to subclass some form of DisplayObjectContainer, of which MovieClip and Sprite are two possible choices (find out, be sure).

But I suspect that the real probem is you're writing Class code like it's timeline code. I think you probably have strict mode off, which is why you're ot getting helpful compile-time errors which would help anyone who's familiar with AS3 (though probably not you) to figure out immediately that your code should look more like

    class Main extends Sprite {
       public var fish1:Fish = new Fish();
       public var fish2:Fish = new Fish();
       public var fish1:Fish = new Fish();
       public function Main() {
          addChild(fish1);
          addChild(fish2);
          addChild(fish3);
          //not going to type this crap.
          //positioning code (and addChild) is a waste of time.
          //that's what the stage is for!
       }
    }

AS3 - types and classes

1 Answers