Centering in new thread

[Chris Lemon]

Todd, just wondering: have you been playing with the code that centers categories in the boxes at all with the new revision?

[Todd Robinson]

No, I have not fixed this yet. To be honest, these stupid chyron "winning" graphics are causing the biggest headache. I have flags set in the program to tell future frames in the timeline to display the flashing text and somehow those flags are being changed to make either none of the images show up or make more than one image show up at the same time. I'm at a point where I just want to drop the flashing images all together. We'll see what happens. It seems impossible but I'll find out where these flags are being changed at.

[Chris Lemon]

Hmm. What's different about these and the one that flashes when someone wins in the Winner's Circle?

[Todd Robinson]

That's what I wish I could figure out. I don't believe I have it set up any different but obviously something's wrong in there somewhere.

This is what I get for working at this with small chunks at a time.

[Todd Robinson]

Chris (and all who are interested)

The flashing text problem is nearing resolve. I missed a stop command that was allowing any and all text in each frame of the main timeline to play at the same time. Oops! Stupid mistake.

Concerning the centering issue, my original thoughts were to change the font used to a fixed-width font and then use the number of characters to determine how many lines would need to be used. Well, that method would just cut off the words. It'll be centered, but...you know. :-)

I have some more ideas up my sleeve. We'll see what happens. Once I get the text situated and tweak a few more graphics, RC3 will be out but without the centering problem fixed.

[Joe Lourenco]

Todd said:

Concerning the centering issue, my original thoughts were to change the font used to a fixed-width font and then use the number of characters to determine how many lines would need to be used. Well, that method would just cut off the words. It'll be centered, but...you know. :-)

Todd, would it be possible to do this:

Have Flash read a category name (HAVE+I+GOT+A+PLACE+FOR+YOU), then read each word one at a time by searching for either a "+" or a "&" (end of line). Have it count how many characters are in a line per after each word (including spaces between words) until it reaches a maximum per line (say 12 characters). That would be the first line. Then start the second line (if needed) with the following word. When it reaches the "&", it will have either 1, 2, or 3 separate lines of text per category.

To center vertically in the box, position the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd lines in each category based on how many lines of text there are. So Line 1 would be positioned higher with 3 lines of text than with 2 lines of text. And all three lines would be centered horizontally in the box.

The example above would result in:

HAVE I GOT

A PLACE FOR

YOU

Granted, you'd have top-heavy categories using this method, and you'd have to have to do it six times, but maybe it could work?

Joe

[Todd Robinson]

That makes a lot of sense. And really, I should look up how to do it. The truth is, there's a lot I don't know about Flash and this project has turned out to be way more difficult than I thought and certainly more difficult than the Feud.

[Todd Robinson]

I've actually made some progress on centering today. The effect works half-way. With some more tweaking, I should be able to effectively center the text seen in the trilons. This should hopefully be ready by RC4/Version1.

[Chris Lemon]

Yer a master, Todd. At least yer learning some stuff about Flash, right?

[Todd Robinson]

I am learning, although I am learning the hard way.