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Frédéric C.
Frédéric C.
Inspiring
July 17, 2011
Question

Cloning MovieClips in AS3 without using linkage names?

  • July 17, 2011
  • 1 reply
  • 3678 views

Hi,

Flash on iOS doesn't allow the use of SWF files having linkage names or containing AS code. It is a problem for me, since I have my assets in external SWF files. For example, let's say that I have a rotating apple animation in an FLA file, in the main timeline. I compile this FLA into a SWF, and then I load the SWF file and add it to my stage. It's working fine.

But now I want to intanciate several apples on my stage. Since I can't create various instances of this object (I don't have a linkage name for that), the only solution would be to be able to duplicate the only instance I have into several clones. I looked around the web, but it seems there is no real way to clone a movieclip, like with duplicateMovieClip() in AS2. All the solutions I tried didn't work.

So please, could you tell me if there is a way to circumvent this limitation and intanciate several copies of the same SWF animation on the stage?

Thank you very much!

Frédéric

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

Colin Holgate
Colin Holgate
Inspiring
July 17, 2011

I believe that if you put movieclips on the stage of your loaded swf, you can then get the class name from that, and then get a new one of those from the loaded swf's library. Look into this:

Class(getDefinitionByName(getQualifiedClassName(obj)));

where obj would be the instance on the loaded swf's stage.

I haven't tried this, but it might work out.

Frédéric C.
Frédéric C.Author
Inspiring
July 17, 2011

Thank you Colin for your fast reply.

I tried your code, but basically what it returns is the MovieClip class. So when I intanciate a new object with this computed class, it creates an empty MovieClip. In other words :

clone = new Class(getDefinitionByName(getQualifiedClassName(obj)));

is equal to

clone = new MovieClip();

So it doesn't create an object with its own predefined contents, like you would expect from a MovieClip with a linkage name in your library.

Colin Holgate
Colin Holgate
Inspiring
July 17, 2011

Next up might be to getdefinitionbyname(instance.name), and name the prototype instance with the same name it has in the library.

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