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how did they do this?

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disfasia

Programmer
Joined
Apr 20, 2001
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378
Location
CA
this link, after the splash,

has an interesting menu that i am trying to figure out...i imagine it was made like a drop down menu, but i cannot figure out all the steps...can someone tell me, roughly, how this menu was built?
thanks,
disfasia
 
i would greatly appreciate the fla. since i can better study the how to's from there...thanks so much Nick!

regards,

disfasia

vigo@disfasia.net
 
I looked at nick's fla which was helpful, but there are many questions i have that are unresolved because the buttons in that fla are much less complex ultimately than the above site:

first, instead of rollout and the menu changes back to its initial position, i want to keep the menu fixed as in the site above, where another button can be pressed and then the menu changes into its former position and then to the selected button position. how would i do this? you see, i am using actions that call into play certain frames, but there is always the problem of how to have two plays consectively. for instance, if i am in the principal menu all the buttons are the same size, i click on one button that becomes big while the others become smaller; i click on another button and i want it to become bigger, passing through the intial stage where all the buttons are the same. obviously this is easy to do for the second button since i can say go to frame 10 where it plays 10 through 15 going to the initial sizes and then 15 through 20 where 20 represents the second button as a large size and the rest as small. but then to do this with the third button where i would want to repeat 10 through 15 but then skip to frame 21, for a new resizing. do you follow? if you look at the site it will seem much easier...(make sure to skip the splash there...the menu is immediately after entering).

if anyone has an idea about how i can action script this, i would be greatly appreciative!

regards,
disfasia
 
OK I'm going to try and integrate this into the fla. What i am thinking is that you could have 2 buttons over each circle, one covering the top half and one covering the botton half. Therefore you should be able to run different animations depending on which side of the button you roll over first... Nick Price
nick.price@misuk.net
 
OK this is beginning to annoy me. I'm sure there must be a simpler way to do this( without having to think of endless possibilites and outcomes of certain mouse movements). I throw down the gauntlet to any of you experts to recreate this little menu thing. (That means you dave LOL). My head is about to explode. Nick Price
nick.price@misuk.net
 
I'm gonna have a go at it this weekend as I'm a little busy at the moment. Looks like it could be fun. roda B-)
 
a fla for this type of menu was posted in the forum weeks ago, if you can be bothered looking for it, not by me i must say.
dave@pinkzeppelin.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^​
 
I did a search as Dave suggested and found only this fla at
But after looking at the fla it doesn't really answer my questions above since the fla deals with a menu complex in a much different way--it is more formulaic than what i am imagining--and there is not really an animation of motion, but rather rather detached, static moves. I am still thinking of ways to do this animated menu...any ideas are greatly appreciated....thanks again all!

disfasia
 
Sorry to sound thick, but are we talking about the menu in the center, where you hit a square and the sqaures all re-size and re-position the other buttons, or the little round buttons top left?

The only way I can think (on a Friday morning after a weeks holiday) to do the menu jobbie in the center is to do each menu 'option' as a seperate scene.

So the initial screen layout is scene 1, option 1 is scene 2 and so on.

The intro. to each scene would have to be, or include, the frames for re-sizing the menu options. I'm not sure whether it would be best to do this by ActionScript and resize the individual movie clips, or actually do it by have a whole series of frames or mc's, per scene, which you can call based on the current menu option that has been selected.

To be honest, your best bet is probably to e-mail the site's webmaster and ask them!

=)

PetitPal.
 
Hey Petit, thanks a lot but its the other menu we're all puzzling about! The little round buttons that shift when you move over 'em. Any ideas? :-) Nick Price
nick.price@misuk.net
 
I am confused now...I thought "we" (haha) were puzzled over the other menu??? now i am doubly puzzled! well, i wrote the creators of the other site, but you see, here in italy people are extremely paranoid about this stuff and i will likely never find the true mystery behind this menu...
 
OMG! I thought you meant the little circular ones! (which are equally hard to figure out!) LOL Oh well i'll try and figure out the other one now! haha Nick Price
nick.price@misuk.net
 
sorry...that link only works if your right-click save target as...

To see it online go to and click on 'Moving Buttons' in the left hand menu- don't worry it's not the same one as before! Nick Price
nick.price@misuk.net
 
*lol* - always useful if you know which bit you're trying to solve!!!

As for the round buttons, I'm not entirely sure myself - I guess you could do it with loads and loads and loads of tweens, etc, or better would be with script.

Each button is prob. a movie clip, with a button inside, and when the button is hit it has some script which uses the movie properties stuff to shift the other 3 down a bit.

If it wasn't with script then it could be that each movie clip (well the bottom three buttons anyway) has a tween action of it moving down a little bit and a tween action of it moving up a little bit and when a button is 'hit' it uses the <movie clip>.play thingy - to play it until it has tweened down / up etc.

Hmmm... OK, so I admit this probably isn't that helpful a post - but it's some more ideas at least!

=)

PetitPal.
 
Nick, you seem to have figured this out...so now, tell us, how did you do it? could you send me the fla? thanks again,
disfasia

vigo@disfasia.net
 
I just used some simple actionscripting to set a variable as Red, green, or blue depending on which button was pressed. When the buttons return to their original sizes the an If statement checks the variable and goes to the necessary frame. Pretty simple, but something impossible to achieve without a bit of actionscript. I'll try and post the fla but im not sure if it'll work....if not i'll email it to you. ;-) Nick (Web Designer)
nick.price@misuk.net
 
Just thinking, you could use pretty much the same principle on the round button system to tell the movie which button is being rolled over and from where. This should sort that out as well. Nick (Web Designer)
nick.price@misuk.net
 
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