Week 12: Hit Testing, Tweens, Transitions, and Third Party Libraries

Hit Testing

It can be useful when creating dynamic code based animation to be able to detect when one display object collides with another. This is called “Hit Testing”. You can hit test two ways, with two objects or with an object and a point on the stage.

To hit test two objects, use the hitTestObject method:

object1.hitTestObject(object2)

To hit test and object and a point, use the hitTestPoint method:

object.hitTestPoint(xcoordinate,ycoordinate)

TWEENS

The Tween class allows you to animate the same properties you could using a Motion Tween on the timeline:

Tween Reference

Now, with these objects, for the first time we are using Flash packages that are not automatically imported when we publish the file, so we have to do that first:

import fl.transitions.Tween;
import fl.transitions.easing.*;

TRANSITIONS

There are a number of transitions designed to bring content on or off the stage in the fl.transitions package. The Transition Manager class allows you to access these transitions:

Transition Manager Reference

USING THIRD PARTY LIBRARIES: TWEEN LITE

Third part libraries are code created by companies or individuals to extend the capabilities of Flash or make common tasks easier. These libraries arenot part of the core actionscript packages but can be imported into your Flash project for use in your applications. We’re going to look at one popular library today.

Tween Lite – A more robust tweening engine than the built in Tween class.

Here are the detailed instructions that we’re going to follow today to use Tween Lite

There is also a good tutorial on importing third party libraries here