how to get a movie clip to replay?

[jambiscotti]

hi! i've got a movie clip containing a menu that shows up/hides when buttons are pressed. the first time the menu shows up, it plays an animation. every subsequent time that a button is pressed to open the menu, there is no animation. how can i get the animation to replay every time the button is pressed? i've tried writing menu.play();, menu.prevFrame();, MovieClip(menu.root).play(); etc. but none of those commands do anything. does anyone have any ideas? thank you in advance!

edit: also, an unrelated question but in case anyone knows, when the menu is closed, the music from the menu still continues playing despite the button being told to stop all sounds (SoundMixer.stopAll();). does this have something to do with the fact that the button and sound are inside of the movie clip? because buttons on the main stage are able to stop the sound without a problem.

[kglad]

SoundMixer.stopAll() stops all sounds playing at the time the code executes.  it doesn't stop sounds that start after that code executes.

so if you hear sound after that executes, you're either wring (it doesn't execute) or you're hearing a sound that started after that code executes.

as for restarting your menu, do you have code on your menu's timeline?  if so, that's a potential problem and needs to be explained. eg, if you have a stop() on the last frame of your menu, you should use menu.gotoAndPlay(1) to restart it.

[jambiscotti]

thank you for your response! i realized i overlooked the fact that the animations are inside separate movie clips that are within the menu movie clip, so i tried to replay them as you'd suggested by writing something like menu.text.gotoAndPlay(1); (for the menu text movieclip) but it still doesn't work! i do have a stop() code at the end of each separate animation.

as for the music, the song starts when the menu button does the following command:

var song:menusong = new menusong();

var channel:SoundChannel = song.play();

and fails to stop when it's closed. it's still continuing despite the code being there to stop all sounds (it doesn't repeat or anything, it just keeps going). there's no other music on the timeline or anything.. i have the exact same code playing something different when the menu is gone, and the menu button manages to stop that with the stopAll command when the menu opens.

edit: i've just taken the close menu button outside the movie clip and that seems to have fixed things! i think the fact that the button was inside the menu movie clip was causing problems. the animation still isn't replaying though 😞

[kglad]

use trace(this.name) on the timeline of the animation you want to stop.

[jambiscotti]

thank you again for your response. just "trace(this.name);"? that doesn't seem to stop the animation.. it keeps looping if i write that!

[kglad]

the trace statement is used to help debug your code.  you use that to determine the correct reference. eg,

trace(this.name,this.parent.name,this.parent.parent.name)

[jambiscotti]

kglad, when i write in what you wrote, i get an output of "instance12 pausemenu root1", what does that mean? sorry, i've never done this before! thank you for being patient with me.

thank you nick, i've gotten the sound to work now but i'll be sure to check that video out for future reference.

[kglad · Accepted solution]

it means you have not assigned an instance name for the timeline that you want to control.  assign it an instance name (eg, anim) and, if your code is on the main timeline, use:

pausemenu.anim.gotoAndPlay(1);

which makes me wonder what 'menu' is and if there's a playmenu someone that's going to complicate things.

[jambiscotti]

this might seem like a dumb question, but how do you assign an instance to a timeline? i thought the instance of a timeline was the instance of the object with the timeline in it, ie. a "text" movieclip with an animation inside of it.

there's no menu object per se -- i just wrote that in the opening post to make it simpler. there is only a pausemenu. sorry for the confusion!

[kglad]

the movieclip that contains your trace statement is added to the pausemenu timeline.  click on that movieclip and, in the properties panel, enter an instance name.

[jambiscotti]

it works now!! thank you so much! i couldn't have figured it out without your help!

[kglad]

you're welcome.

[Nicktendo28]

If nothing else watch this tutorial and see if they way this mp3 player is built works for you. Flash MP3 Player Tutorial How to Make an MP3 Player - YouTube