03.23.01

Editor's Note

Well, I'm still working on the outline of the site tutorial, but I will be posting tutorials that we will be using to work with the site.

I've gotten lots of requests to make the "How To Make A Flash Site From Start To Finish" tutorials into a PDF file. I'll see what I can do for you all. Who knows, maybe I'll even get to make a book if they are good enough hehe.. I WISH! But you never know.

Let me know how you like my tutorials and what you want to see.

Thanks for reading FlashNewz!

John Paul Rawlins

 

I finally got to play around with Reason ( the FULL Version ) this week and I'm in LOVE. This program is the best program that I've ever seen for making Techno loops/songs. I played with it for hours on end!

There are so many effects and tons of options. You can do just about anything you want to do with this program. The only problem is that it costs about USD$300 - $400 (Depending on where you look).

When downloading, the sound bank for the trial version is very small. However, when you get the full version, you have over 500 megs of sound files for your loops.

Propellerhead also offers "refills" which can help you expand on the software.

You can program every note, drum beat, bass line, voice, or whatever you want. It's AWESOME! It's also a great program if you're into composing techno. I mean IT'S GREAT!!

You have your hardware interface, 16 channel mixer, Delay, Reverb, Subtractor Synth, Digital Synth, EQ Compressor, DR Rex player, Chorus, Flange, and more. Plus, you can connect this program to other Propellerhead programs to make some awesome music. You can even choose how to hook up your digital hardware just like you would if you had the real thing, except you don't have to worry if you have enough cords, or how long they are or whatever!

From what I read, the only limitation to how many sounds, patches, etc., you can add to the program is the speed of your computer. That's right. Your only limitation is your hardware! Pretty cool, huh?

Here are some loops I made with Reason:

They aren't the best in the world, but they are pretty groovy! Feel free to use them for your Flash movies.

Loops
loop1.wav - 1,378K
loop2.wav - 344K
loop3.wav - 344K

Effects
effect4.wav - 689K
effect5.wav - 689K

Here is a short song that I was working on. It's just a ROUGH outline, but it will give you a good look at what you can do with Reason. The first part is kind of boring, but I really like the second half.

DB.mp3

If you want some more information on Reason check out Propellerheads site: www.propellerheads.se



This is a really cool site! Very original in the design. The intro is interesting and I really like the game -hehe.

It's really cool how the menu is more like a room than a menu. It makes it more interactive and much more fun.

The menus in each room are way cool, and I LOVE THE PEOPLE! Make sure to check out the Team section. I think that's awesome how they have LIFE-LIKE pictures of each of them. You're going to have to see for yourself!

Do you have the power?
www.powerflasher.com



In this tutorial, I'm going to show you how your users can change movie backgrounds with multiple .fla files. I'm also going to show you how to load external .swf files in your movies.

---

Ok, for this tutorial we're going to make 3 separate .flas. The first .fla Is going to be our "Loader" .fla. The loader .fla pulls together the other 2 .flas.

First, make a new movie.

Right-click on the first frame of your new movie and go to Actions/Basic Actions/LoadMovie.

This will add the LoadMovie action to your action panel.

Now, click on LoadMovie (the one you just added to your Actions) if it isn't highlighted. This will give you several options at the bottom of the movie.

URL- The URL of the Movie, or just movie.swf if you keep it in the same directory. We will be working from the same directory.

Location- which you can choose Level or Target and the Level or Target variable.

Variables- I'm just leaving it with Don't Send.

Here are the values that we're going to use for this movie:

Next Step: Double-click LoadMovie Action again which is located under Basic Actions. Do this so that they are both in the same frame. This time we are going to use the following values:

For ad details & rates..... John@FlashNewz.com


Now Save this .fla as Loader.fla. We will be referring back to it for our testing stages.

NOTE: Make sure that you save all your .fla files in the same directory.

---

Now we're going to make our Background .fla.

Open a new movie. For this movie we are going to have 2 layers. Our action layer and our background layer.( I named mine accordingly)

In the first frame of your Actions Layer, right-click and go to Actions/Basic Actions/Stop. This will tell the movie to stop on this frame.

Now we are going to add a new frame to our Actions layer. Right-click on the second frame of our Actions Layer and select "Insert Blank Keyframe" Now repeat the Stop Action above with this layer.

Now on each frame of your Actions Layer, you should have an "a"

In the Background Layer we're going to make our backgrounds.

For this example we're only going to make 2 solid color backgrounds. You can add pictures, shapes, or anything else that you would like to customize your background.

In the first frame of your background layer, draw a box with the square tool that covers the entire area of your movie.

Then right-click your second frame of your Background layer and go down to "Insert Blank Keyframe". In this frame draw a box just like you did in the first frame, except this time make it a different color. (This is important so that when we test the movie we'll know if we did it correctly or not.)

Now save your .fla. For this tutorial I saved mine as Background.fla.

---

Now it's time to make the buttons that tell our .flas to change from one background to the next.

Make yet another NEW movie.

From our past tutorials you should know how to make simple buttons. If you're just tuning in, click here: www.FlashNewz.com/2001/0309.html and go to the paragraph in the first column titled, "How To Make Simple Buttons."

Make 2 buttons in your first frame, layer one.

Make your first button say Background 1 and the second button say Background 2

Once you've made your buttons, right-click the first button and...

go to Actions. This will pop-up your Actions Menu.

Now under Actions ( Not Basic Actions ) double-click "TellTarget"

This will add



Under the TellTarget options you're going to add "_level1" so it will look like:



This is going to tell our Menu.fla to communicate with our Background.fla which is on Level1 of our Loader.fla.

Now while your tellTarget is selected, double-click Goto action. Select the gotoandplay that was just added to your actions menu.

Below you will have several options.

The first thing we need to do is to uncheck the Go To and Play checkbox at the bottom of the pop-up. This will change your script from gotoAndPlay to gotoAndStop.

Make sure that "1" is chosen in the Frame option.

Your end result for this button should read



Now repeat this step on the second button, but where it says frame 1, make it say frame 2.

Save this movie as Menu.fla in the same folder as the other two.

---

Ok, it's testing time!! Publish all your movies into SWF format in the SAME Folder.

Then open your loader SWF (or HTML) file.. and it should work properly!

Happy backgrounding!

Make sure to keep this tutorial along with the past tutorials. When I've finished this series, I'll show you how to put them all together to make your ENTIRE Flash site using multiple .fla Files.

Let me know what you think of these tutorials! 
John Paul Rawlins 

 

Subscirbe To FlashNewz Text     HTML