How do I fire an actionscript 2 event each frame?

Question

I have a simple ActionScript 2-based flash file where I'm doing all of the animation in code so my movie is only one frame long with a FPS of 12. However, The movie doesn't seem to want to loop. My code in the action fires, but just once.

Now I added a second keyframe making the movie two frames long, and sure enough, then the code fired in the first, then the second, then the first again and so on. BUT... all of my code is in the first frame so now it's only firing at half of the framerate.

Now in ActionScript3 this was easy, but I have to use legacy AS2 here so I'm stumped on what to do.

So is there any way to make a single frame animation fire an event at the target framerate, and if not, is there a way to share code between frames and I'll just call it that way?

Try it! Create a single frame and add code that simply does a trace. Only runs once. Not sure why you'd need a code sample to see that. — Mark A. Donohoe
I just did it again. Created a new project, double-checked it only had a single frame, framerate of 24FPS, opened the 'Actions' window, added a 'trace("Hello");', hit Ctrl-Enter and as repeatedly shown 'Hello' appeared once in the output window. Not sure what you are doing to get different results. Note if I have more than one frame, then the app loops and the code executes every time that frame hits, but not with a length of one. Still @mfa had an answer that worked with a single frame. — Mark A. Donohoe
@mfa pointed that out in their answer which I accepted. For the record, please try to avoid saying things like 'clearly' as to many people new to ActionScript such as myself, it wasn't clear at all. To us, logic would dictate when you define an action for a frame, it makes sense that it would fire every time that frame was executed which isn't the case. As such, please try to keep your answers more objective. — Mark A. Donohoe
But thats just it... being asked to put your code in the action for a frame does sound like you're doing that. Playing with it more however I see its not the action for that frame, but all frames up to the next key frame (when I added five more frames they all shared the same action, but when I added a key frame, they didn't) which makes more sense now what's going on. Kinda odd programming against a timeline and with events simultaneously, but its starting to click. Too bad I'm learning this on the tail end of Flash's dominance. :) — Mark A. Donohoe

mfa mfa · Accepted Answer · 2012-02-19T15:57:43

This should work in your case. In the first frame:

function myFunc(){
  //code here
}
this.onEnterFrame = myFunc;
stop();

You can put the stop at the beginning or end base on your preference.

How do I fire an actionscript 2 event each frame?

1 Answers