problem with tweenlite

Question

i have a bit of a problem. i have the following function:

private function elementsLoadedHandler(e:Event):void
        {
            elementContainer=new Sprite();
            var currentItem:uint;
            for (var i:uint=0; i < numberItems; i++)
            {
                var element:Element=new Element(elementModel.elements[currentItem]);
                element.x=xPos;
                element.alpha=.5;
                addChild(element);
                xPos+=130;
                currentItem++;
                elementsArr.push(element);
                if (currentItem >= elementModel.elements.length)
                {
                    currentItem == 0;
                }
            }
            movementTimer=new Timer(_movementSpeed, 0);
            movementTimer.addEventListener(TimerEvent.TIMER, moveItems);
            movementTimer.start();
            layout();
        }

What this basicly does is place elements from an array onto the stage next to eachother. Now i want them to move to the right together. i do this as following:

private function moveItems(e:TimerEvent):void
        {
            var alphaVal:Number=.5;
            movementTimer.delay+=25;
            for (var i:uint=0; i < elementsArr.length; i++)
            {
                xPos=elementsArr[i].x + 130;
                TweenLite.to(elementsArr[i], .5, {x: "130"});
                if (elementsArr[i].x > _width)
                {
                    elementsArr[i].x=0;
                }
            }
        }

So i'm moving the items to the right and then i check if the last item is outside of the stage, if so i reset its position to 0 so it goes back to the left and this way i have a continious loop of items moving to the right. The problem is that the way i do it, i have 11 tweens being executed per second, wich makes it laggy. I was thinking about putting the items in an container and tweening the container but i dont seem to be getting a nice continious flow then. Does anyone know how to solve this?

Also, in the first function you can see that i'm doing a for loop. the numberItems variable represents 11, but the amount of items in elementModel.elements is only 6, so for the other 5 elements i just pick the first 5 items from the array again. The problem is that when i trace these items it gives me 0. How can i take items from an array multiple times without overwriting the previous version of it?

dotminic dotminic · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-15T22:26:55

You don't need to use tween lite for this. All you need to do in the moveItems function is move each item a little (elemtsArr[i].x += 5, for example) and if elementsArr[i].x > _width, then replace it a 0.

Something like this should work:

function moveItems( e:TimerEvent ):void
{
    for (var i:int = 0; i < elemntsArr.length; i++)
    {
        elementsArr[i].x += 5;
        if (elementsArr[i].x > _width)
            elementsArr[i].x = 0;
    }
}

problem with tweenlite

1 Answers