Comments on: Making a Complete Flash Game: Creating & Understanding the Preloader

By: deny prasetia

deny prasetia — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 12:13:27 +0000

Clear tutor, almost for newbe(me)

By: Troo

Troo — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 17:46:45 +0000

i keep getting th error “1046: Type was not found or was not a compile-time constant: ThePreloader.

By: Mikey

Mikey — Thu, 09 Jun 2011 02:50:36 +0000

Hello,
I completed the tutorial and the loader works fine. The only problem is it becomes visible around %85ish of the whole content loaded. I followed every step here but still failing.
anyone have any idea ?

thanks

By: mittens

mittens — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 19:53:00 +0000

First let me say that I am a student of ActionsScripting and not its master, much to my dismay.
I went through both custom cursor tutorials and they worked wonderfully. Then I proceeded to go on to the preloader tutorial and when I had no assets, other than the image file in the second frame, it worked perfectly. However, when I added the assets necessary for the custom cursor into the movie clip on frame 2, and then called to the class I used to instantiate the cursor, it did not work. The error said that it expected an argument of 1 and received 0, even though I did not change anything in the document class code in regards to the previously working custom cursor.
The way I tried to instantiate the cursor class was by executing a method inside the function which removed the preloader child once the file was completely loaded. I tried passing it no arguments and the stage argument, but neither worked, so I could use some advice if you have any to offer.

By: Dinkyfish

Dinkyfish — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 11:23:55 +0000

Hi folks, first off I’d like to say a big thank you for such a well-written tutorial.

BUT, I’m hitting a problem whenever I try to use it and I’ve been sat here all morning trying to work out what the problem is. If anyone is still checking this topic and can think of any possible solutions then please let me know.

Essentially the loading screen doesn’t appear at all for quite some time, and then when it does it’s only there for a few seconds before the game actually starts. So it appears as though a large portion of the game is being loaded before the loading screen appears. I have gone through my library multiple times to ensure that all my files have ‘Export on frame 1″ unchecked, and are instead all placed in the AllAssets movieclip.

I do however have a large number of art assets in my library that I am not exporting for AS (these are PNG and JPG files that I have imported). They are used in symbols which I am exporting for AS, but the actual images themselves are not exported. Do I need to export them too? That seems like an awful lot of work, especially when I’m essentially creating classes that will never be used…

By: KeithKong

KeithKong — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 19:21:26 +0000

I’ve been trying to use this method for two games now and I’ve discovered one major problem I can’t seem to get rid of when using sounds:

You can do a gotoAndStop(3) rather than play through frame 2. This still loads assets but does not execute them. This solves randomly triggering all the sound files present on frame 2.

However, after playing a game preloaded in this fashion the sounds will randomly cutout on some computers (enough to where I get a ton of complaint comments from gamers).

Any ideas where this problem arises? Again, the sounds works for everyone until about 5-10 minutes into the game. Maybe you just can’t use this method for sounds?

By: tgau

tgau — Wed, 16 Feb 2011 22:31:45 +0000

Thanks for this terrific tutorial! Your writing is way better than anything I’ve seen in the official Adobe manuals. I suspect that the Adobe writers don’t understand what they are writing about. You are awesome!

I have one stupid question(s):
Is the SWF file generated by this Preloader.fla the only file I need to publish? Will this contain everything needed to play the game? What about sound files that are loaded during runtime?

By: lubo

lubo — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 13:54:46 +0000

make sure all classes have default values to their constructor parameters(or was it arguments?).
eg

public static function Example(Colour:uint = 0×000000)

therefore, it will still work, even if you’ve just dragged it onto the stage.

something like

public static function Example(Colour:uint) will throw an error

By: Adam

Adam — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 11:10:46 +0000

This is really bugging me! No matter what I do, I keep getting Compiler Error 1137 – “Incorrect number of arguments, expected no more than 0″.

The error’s source appears to lie in the constructor parameters of Class Engine

public function Engine():void{
preloader = new ThePreloader(467, this.loaderInfo)
}

If I remove the parameters

If I remove the paramaters, the movie loads on Frame 2, with a full size PreloadBar immediately, and throws RunTime Error #1009: “Cannot access a property or method of a null object reference.
Ticking “Allow Debuuging” in the ActionScript settings, reveals the following details.

[The Error is located] at com.asgamer.snipergame::ThePreloader/checkLoad()[/Users/adam/Documents/Adobe/Flash/snipergame/com/asgamer/snipergame/ThePreloader.as:22]Runtime Error

I can’t find a solution for this. Any suggestions would be most welcome, as I really like your tutorial series,
Thanks!

By: Chris

Chris — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 22:00:34 +0000

A few things I got stuck on (AND FIXED!)

1) This is not a complete tutorial. Step 1 of the next tutorial explains that you *must* be on frame 3 to start using game assets (like loading your main menu). If you’re getting null references or an argument count mismatch, this is likely your issue. ASgamer solves this with a 1 second tween.

2) If you have internal sounds to load, you must place them on the second frame *inside* the asset holder mc (with a stop on the first frame. 8bit rocket talks about this. *Do not* set the Sync property of your sounds to “Stop.” This will cause it to load on the first frame (killing the effect we want).

3) Always make sure you’re not accessing things before you get to frame 3. I was instantiating my sounds at the top of my Engine class and realized that had to be moved to after the Tween as well.

Hope that helps!