ActionScript 3 movieclip with interchangeable images

Question

I'm creating a game using Flash Develop and ActionScript 3.0 and I can't figure out how to make a "Character Creation" menu, in the sense that, I want to animate a movieclip full of images (head, torso, arms, etc.) and then change out any image with another. So I'd like players to be able to choose what kind of sunglasses they want their character to have, for example, and the different sunglasses will keep the animation that I made with the original ones.

From what I know so far I can export a movie clip as a .swf and use it as such, but how do I change out images and keep the animation?

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't know how much actionscript you know.. but if you just want an idea how to do it and not the whole thing in code...

I would personally make different movie clips for the different parts of the body that can be changed and then change frames in that move clip. For example one movie clip with different hairstyles, one with (sun)glasses and so on.. and then just go to then next frame in the "hairMC" to change the hairstyle.

Answer 2

The way I'd do it is to create MovieClips that all implement the same Interface and then have other MC's higher up that know how to use the particular Interface. For example, if you had an IArm, it might know how to swing and how to grasp (and it might grasp by using an IHand). A fat ITorso might attach the arms at a different spot than a thin one.

And your Character might have an IHead, ITorso, etc. When you created a Character, you could either pass in these components via the constructor (I'm not a big fan of constructor arguments for Views, but it's one way to do this), or you can expose setters on your Character that allow you to set these properties one at a time.

This gives you tremendous flexibility in how to put your character together--none of the pieces know precisely how the others are put together, but the methods they need to operate on are in place, so you can put in any implementation you can think of.