as3 loading screen

Question

How do you create these \"loading, please wait\" splash screens with a loading bar and percentage for your swf? Does as3 have some built-in methods or should it be designe

Answer 1

There's a few different ways to do this.

Either you can have a two step process - create a swf file that simply loads in the main file, reporting progress (by listening to the progress-event on the loader) and then adding the loaded swf as a child.

Or, you can place all your content on frame 2, and stay on frame 1, checking the root.loaderInfo.bytesLoaded compared to root.loaderInfo.totalBytes values, reporting the percentage and then moving on to frame 2 when done.

Personally, I think method 1 is better, since you don't need to sully yourself with frames.

There is also a third way which uses some weird meta-data tags to simulate the second way, but without frames. It's a bit messy, but should be googleable.

Answer 2

If all of your code is on the timeline, then the easiest way is to make a second swf that is only used for loading your main swf. If your main swf is called main.swf, the code in your loading swf would be something like this:

//make a loader
var loader:Loader = new Loader()

//listen for loading progress
loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, onProgress);

//listen for when the load is finished
loader.contentLoaderInfo.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);

//load!
loader.load(new URLRequest("main.swf"));

function onProgress(event:ProgressEvent):void
{
    //calculate how much has been loaded
    var percentageLoader:Number = event.bytesLoaded / e.bytesTotal;

    //use your percentage number here to drive a loader bar graphic
}

function onComplete(event:Event):void
{
    //remove listeners now that loading is done
    loader.contentLoaderInfo.removeEventListener(ProgressEvent.PROGRESS, onProgress);
    loader.contentLoaderInfo.removeEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onComplete);

    //add loaded swf to the stage
    addChild(loader.content);
}

As an aside, externalizing your assets opens up new preloading possibilities. Instead of having everything in your main swf, you can have your main swf load external assets, and preload those assets. Since your main swf would then be small, there would be no need to have a second swf just for loading your main swf.

Answer 3

Flash has its own component you can use to accomplish this:

http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ActionScript/3.0_UsingComponentsAS3/WS5b3ccc516d4fbf351e63e3d118a9c65b32-7fa4.html

Or you can build your own progress bar from scratch:

http://www.zedia.net/2008/the-right-way-to-do-a-preloader-in-as3/

There are lots of resources on the web that allow you to customize the progress bar- browse around and find one that works for you and your coding style.