I can't get this piece of code to work.

Question

Hello everybody!
I am using AS2 and I am trying to make a simple 'game' for an assignment for school.
I am first trying to make a simplified version of the game, to get some experience before I make the final version.
I will try to explain this simplified version:
The player has to drag an object in a big square and then release it. The object resamples 20 liter water. In total the player has to drag 100 liter water to the square, so it has to drag and drop the 'water' object 5 times.
I want some text in screen that says: You still need ... liters of water.
The ... is a dynamic text field with the name 'liters'.
To help myself I made a counter that counts how many times the water is dragged and dropped.
This is the code I placed in the 'water' movieclip:
<code>
onClipEvent(load)
var countWater = 0;
_root.createTextField("watercount",1,500,100,100,40); //this is the counter I was talking about
_root.watercount.text = countWater;
var literWater;
on(press)
startDrag(this);
on(release)
stopDrag();
if(this._droptarget == "/watertarget"){ //watertarget is the box the waterobject has to be placed in
this._x = 150;
this._y = 300;
countWater++;
_root.watercount.text = countWater;
literWater = (100 - (20 * countWater)); //I thought this should work. For example if countWater is 1, literWater schould be 100 - 20*1 = 80.
_root.liters.text = literWater;
} else
this._x = 150;
this._y = 300;
</code>
But this for some reason doesn't work. Before I drop the waterobject in the box, the text displayed is 'lev' and after I drop the waterobject, '0' is displayed, instead of 80.
The counter does actually works well. It counts 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc.
So I figured there is probably something wrong in one of these 2 lines:
literWater = (100 - (20 * countWater));
_root.liters.text = literWater;
Could someone please help me out with this? I would really appreciate it!
By the way, I'm quitte new to AS, so it could be some newby mistake.
Message was edited by: rickbreda1

Answer 1

I would be most suspscious of your liters textfield not being named properly.  If I recreate what would support your code it works fine for me.
Why don't you try creating it the same way do the watercount textfield just to see if it is working correctly.  I've been assuming there is only one water movieclip that you use over and over again.  If not, then you should get take the on(clipEvent) code off of it and just put that code in the timeline, less the on(clipEvent) part of it.
Actually, placing any code on objects is not a good practice.  You should assign instance names to all your objects and then place the code in the timeline, using the instance names to target them.  If you give your "water" movieclip that name, your code in the timeline would end up looking like...
var countWater = 0;
_root.createTextField("watercount",1,500,100,100,40);
_root.watercount.text = countWater;
var literWater;
water.onPress = function(){
    startDrag(this);
water.onRelease = function(){
   stopDrag();
   if(this._droptarget == "/watertarget"){
        countWater++;
        _root.watercount.text = countWater;
       literWater = (100 - (20 * countWater));_root.liters.text = literWater;
   this._x = 150; // no need to have an else if it only does part of what the if does
   this._y = 300;
As far as placing code into posts goes,  I usually just paste it (Ctrl-v) and then do what I can to make it look properly indented.  Others will use the >> tool offered in the editing interface to enter an area for code.  As far as having tags for code, I don't think that is supported any longer.