I get massive lag whenever the screen scrolls, but only when the ground is on the screen. When only part of the screen has ground on it, there's less lag, and when no ground can be seen, there's pretty much no lag (I think).

At 6/22/08 07:00 PM, LuxGamer wrote: I posted this code on missile help. And it worked fine. But then, my ocmputer crashed and this code was not saved. So I went online and I got the code and copy + pasted it back to its place.
Its not working, the laser is not apearing on the screen.
Why???
Is it the code??
Is there some mistake I could have made while pasting it??

function rFire(){
bla++
_root.attachMovie( "redLaser", "rLaser" + bla, 2000 + bla)
cLaser = _root["rLaser" + bla]
cLaser._x = player._x
cLaser._y = player._y
cLaser.onEnterFrame = function(){
this._y += -6
}

Please help xP If I dont finish my game by the 26th then I wont be able to for a while. x(

My #1 guess would be that the linking properties for the laser movie clip aren't set up correctly at the moment.

But just from a glance, you have two opening braces "{", but only one closing brace "}" - perhaps there's supposed to be a second one in there somewhere? Also, I always put semicolons at the end of my statements (and you should too!), so I'm not sure if the lack of semicolons has anything to do with it...

Hope this helps!

So I've done some tests, and it looks like it ALWAYS compiles fine on this second computer.

I also found that on the first computer, I can go to File > Publish Settings, and on the Flash tab, and uncheck "Compress movie" for some substantial improvements. With "Compress movie" unchecked:

- 2-3 megs of music seems to compile fine every time I do Test Movie (not tested extensively).
- 7 megs of mp3s causes the occasional "scenario 1" (can't load first frame), and I haven't yet seen a "scenario 2" (stops loading part way through), nor a "scenario 3" (works perfectly). Almost all of the time, it's a "scenario 4", where some of the songs/sounds have garbled parts, and sometimes a few of the vector graphics are completely screwed up on some frames. By "garbled", I mean some half-second chunks of the song sound like a loud, more glitchy version of the Protoss Reaver from StarCraft. And certain mp3s (which I initially encoded with a certain free encoder) have the tendancy to start out ok, but then gradually start deteriorating, with buggy silences being added in rhythically every half second or so.
- I haven't tested anything over 8 megs yet...

So, problem solved for me at least - I just need to compile the final copy on my second machine =p

Woah, good call - I just tried compiling the fla on another computer with the same version of Flash, and it worked fine! Now to see if the SWFs generated by each machine will work on the others...

Anything over 60 FPS is definitely overkill. But since there's no motion blur, it's not beyond human perception to see the individual frames at 24 FPS. Still, I'd recommend 24-30 FPS if possible, lower only if it runs slowly =]

Yeah, but while higher FPSs are generally better, there are exceptions.

For example, I'm working on a game that uses a ridiculous amount of enemies - running it at 24 or 30 fps would cause lag on older computers (such as mine), so I settled for 15 FPS. I've played Flash games here (popular, highly-rated ones) that are SUPPOSED to run at 20 or 30 fps, but slow down to 15 or so when I'm actually playing, making it really boring and sometimes unplayable. If your game is susceptible to a lot of slowdown, I'd be cautious and lower the FPS a bit. Either that, or include graphics options to benefit older machines.

If your bullets look funky and a higher FPS is not feasible, then make fewer bullets ^_^
If your game can handle it though, do use a higher FPS.

Another clue:
I've made a fla with nothing in it put a simple-as-possible preloader, a few squiggly drawings (so I can tell when the animation stops), and an mp3 that plays. Having the exact same problem - movie screws up and stops unless the mp3 is compressed to less than 2 or so megs.

Something new I noticed though: if the mp3 linkage settings has "Export for ActionScript" checked, the mp3 loads (or fails to load and screws up) just like I've described above. But if I leave "Export for ActionScript" UN-checked and do Test Movie, the movie plays fine but the mp3 will not play or load....? I'm not even using ActionScript, the mp3 is simply on the timeline, why should this option matter?! I'm utterly confused here, any help at all would be greatly appreciated.

I may be on the verge of something, I'll check Google again...

Hi, just bumping this up, since it's almost on page 3, with no responses. Don't feel the need to read my entire post - at this point I'm mainly looking for clues... I must siphon as much Flash knowledge from the community as possible!! =O

At 6/21/08 03:19 AM, Hoeloe wrote: Stream it in a movieclip and cut the end off.

Or yeah, that would probably be better ^_^

Since you made all the music yourself, would it be easy to simply cut a certain number of milliseconds off the end of each song when you're encoding the mp3s? That's what I did (using Acid)... some of the songs loop very well and the silence is almost undetectable, while other songs aren't so hot...

Don't have any other solutions, but if it's a big deal, I'd search google for mp3 encoders that are good at not leaving gaps.

I've encountered a very strange and annoying bug of sorts, unlike anything I've ever seen in Flash. This might take a while to explain - so don't feel obligated to read the entire post before responding! ;)

Up until recently, I could use Test Movie, and my game would run and load just fine every time.

Then I finally added music, and chaos ensued. The gist is that the game can't seem to load more than a certain number of bytes worth of sounds, and makes the preloader halt (or worse). However, this "certain number" changes every time I do Test Movie. If I use around 2.5 or 3 megabytes of sound, doing Test Movie will result in one of the four scenarios:

1) The movie fails to load the first frame - it shows the background color and nothing more, and the right-click menu has most of the options missing (zoom in, play, rewind, etc.) , and the rest (all 2 of them) are grayed out. Re-opening the generated swf will result in nothing happening (not even another blank window).
2) Preloader stops at some seemingly random number between 0 and 100. If I re-open the generated swf, the preloader will again stop at the EXACT SAME number. I added a button to skip past the preloader even if it's not done loading - but when the movie gets to/past the point in the timeline where the sounds are, the movie stops and can't go on.
3) The game loads to 100% and works perfectly fine.
4) This scenario is rare, but: the game works alright, but a few of the vector graphics are royally messed up, and/or some of the mp3s have weird garbled parts.

The more sound data there is, the greater chance there is of it messing up. Anything more than around 3 megs will be almost certain to fail, while 2.5 megs fails only some of the time, and under 1 or 2 megs works fine pretty much every time.

Here are some things I've done to try to fix it:

- Compressing mp3s inside Flash (useful, but no dice - and I have to wait for the music to compress every time I hit Test Movie).
- NOT compressing the sound (exact same problem, only the mp3s are much bigger).
- Using mp3s from a reputable website, instead of ones I encoded myself (still no difference).
- Using "export in first frame" to load the mp3s in the first frame - this just makes it so instead of halting the preloader (scenario 2), it halts before the first frame loads (scenario 1).
- Instead of using music in actionscript, including it only in the timeline or in a movieclip - guess what? Doesn't work.

One thing that I haven't yet tried is STREAMING the music. However, I'm not sure if that's a good idea. The game usually runs at a steady 15 fps, but dips quite a bit below during certain intense moments - would streaming music make it skip frames instead of causing a temporary slow-down? Because that would be bad for various reasons...

Another thing I haven't tried is seeing if 4 megabytes worth of images will cause this same problem. Worth testing I think, I'll get back about this tomorrow.

One thing that I THINK I noticed (maybe I'm just crazy, or maybe it's just a coincidence) is that using different bitrates (kbps) for different mp3s yields a greater chance of failure than using the same bitrate for all mp3s.

Right now, it's looking like these are my options:
a) Take the blue pill and stay in wonderland - compress my mp3s to abysmal quality, or simply use less songs in my game. I'll be pretty sad if I have to do this...
b) Take the red pill and learn about this bizarre behaviour - has anyone ever encountered anything like this before, or have ANY IDEAS AT ALL about what might be causing it, or how to fix it? I would greatly appreciate any help or feedback, even if it's just a hunch or idea =D
c) Use streaming music (light blue pill?)

I'm using Macromedia Flash 8 (actionscript 2), and my mp3 wishlist is around 4-6 megabytes (depending on how much I decide to compress them).

On a related note... will a 6 meg swf cause unreasonable loading times? Maybe I need to reconsider the quantity of music the game needs...?

Thanks for reading, please give some input if you can! =)

Great, thanks!

Last time I made a submission, I unassumingly submitted it on none other than "Madness Day" - long story short: my submission got 0 reviews, and not many votes/views either. I'm about to post the sequel... Are there any NG "post-ridiculous-volumes-of-submissions-
fest" days this weekend? There doesn't seem to be anything in the news section, but I want to be 100% sure ;)

GAAAH, what is this "Madness Day"? I posted my non-madness Flash, and it got bumped of the page by hundreds of madness! Now my poor Flash has 0 reviews! (At least it got a great score)

I know this goes without saying, but.... this is madness!!

Hmm, I don't think it fits in any of the game categories at all. Ah well, I'll keep it in game/interactive anyway then. Thanks!

(Note: this thread is in no way an attempt to advertise)

On to the question: I submitted a piece of interactive Flash yesterday in the "Game/Interactive" category. You control Pacman in the style of a platformer game (Super Mario Bros. to be exact), but Pacman can't jump very high - all he can do is eat. For comedic purposes, the "gameplay" consists entirely of moving in one direction while hilarity ensues. The problem is, many people are giving it bad reviews because of the (intentional) lack of gameplay! My assumption was that interactive movies were to go in the "game/interactive" section (especially if it is disguised as a game). Should I move this "interactive movie" to the "Movies" section? Thank you!

Here is a link to the submission:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/39 8603