FLASH: Modifying Symbols Within .swfs?

[Tobie Kerridge]

Hi,


I have an idea which I'm trying to sort out. Areas of it I can do, some

parts I'm lost, so if you have a minute I'll step through the thing, with as

much as I know described...


There's a text file called "variablelist.txt" which sits next to my swf on a

server. The file has a few pairs of values and variables:

value1=orange

&value2=apple

&value3=banana

&value4=pear


And I get this in to my swf using this actionScript in the first frame:

Load Variables ("variablelist.txt", 0)


This  makes the pairs available to other moveclips on level 0, and I want to

do a couple of things with them, which I can't figure out:

1. Count the number of pairs and give a variable to the integer

2. Generate x movie clips were x is the value of the new variable

3. Have each movieclip display one of the external values, not by setting

the value as the "variable" property of a text field, but somehow by

generating a symbol out of the value, which can scale and rotate for example

(it seems a textfield as symbol can't do this).


I imagine this will be done by setting up an action which loops x number of

times. Each loop will create a new instance of an MC, containing a symbol

which is somehow generated from the string of "value y", where y is

incremented each loop to evalute a different variable from the loaded text

file.


Can anyone help with this problem? I'm sure it could be useful to anyone who

wants to generate fresh content in their swf by simply editing a textfile?

You could extent the text file and the action of the loop to also pass each

MC other values, like URLs to be associated with the button action of the

dynamic symbol.


cheers


-------------------------------------

Tobie Kerridge

Mook


a: 116 Baker Street, London, W1M 1LB

w: http://www.mook.co.uk

e:

tobiemook [dot] co [dot] uk

t: 020 7959 1530 ex:395


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