Emanuele Feronato

italian geek and PROgrammer

Talking about Actionscript 3, Flash and Game development.

The opportunity to win up to $7000 with “Word Play” Flash Game Contest ends in 20 days, and I already showed you how to embed a text file in Flash.

Now it’s time to make something useful out of it.

In this script, you will learn something about dynamic text fields styling, input text fields and arrays.

All in one.

First, and seen in How to embed a text file in Flash post, you need to embed the text file… this time I am using a comma separated file, like this:

aa,aah,aahed,aahing,...,zymurgy,zyzzyva,zyzzyvas

and I am embedding it in the same old way:

package {
	import flash.utils.ByteArray;
	// assuming that words.txt is the name of your text file
	// and it's stored in the same directory of your flash file
	[Embed(source="words.txt",mimeType="application/octet-stream")]
	public class embedded_text extends ByteArray {
		public function embedded_text() {
		}
	}
}

Now, the main file will hold the “game”… you have to write a word… if the word exists in the text file, then the textarea background color will turn to green, if the word does not exist, the textarea background will turn to red.

package {
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.text.TextField;
	import flash.text.TextFieldType;
	import flash.text.TextFormat;
	import flash.events.Event;
	public class wordz extends Sprite {
		// creation of a new text field
		var text_field:TextField = new TextField();
		// importing the text file
		var words:embedded_text = new embedded_text();
		// creating a new text format
		var text_format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();
		// the array where we will store all words contained in the text file
		var words_array:Array = new Array();
		public function wordz() {
			// adding the text field to stage
			addChild(text_field);
			// making it an input text
			text_field.type=TextFieldType.INPUT;
			// defining its size and position
			text_field.x=20;
			text_field.y=20;
			text_field.width=460;
			text_field.height=30;
			// defining its format
			text_field.background=true;
			text_field.text="write a word";
			text_field.border=true;
			text_format.color=0x000000;
			text_format.size=24;
			text_field.setTextFormat(text_format);
			// splitting the text file removing the commas ","
			// and inserting words into the array
			words_array=words.toString().split(",");
			// listener for the text to change
			text_field.addEventListener(Event.CHANGE,on_input);
		}
		public function on_input(e:Event) {
			// looking for the position of the text field content
			// into the array of words
			var position:int=words_array.indexOf(text_field.text);
			if (position>-1) {
				// if the word exists...
				text_field.backgroundColor=0x00ff00;
			} else {
				// if not...
				text_field.backgroundColor=0xff0000;
			}
		}
	}
}

And this is the result… type something in the text area and if it’s a valid word, the background will turn to green.

Yes, checking for word match is that easy… now it’s up to you designing a great game and grab the prize.

Download the full source code, word list included