Shooting multiple bullets

Question

Hello everyone,
I'm trying to make my platform game character shoot a gun, my
character and gun are one movieclip and the bullet is another. The
bullet mc starts on a blank frame with a stop() function, when I
press the space bar the bullet mc plays from frame 2 which is a
motion tween of the bullet quickly moving across the page. I've set
the bullet's y and x values relative to the character mc so that
the bullet always comes from the gun.
My issue is that if I press the space bar a bullet will fly
out of the gun (great!) but if I press the space bar again, the
first bullet disappears and the bullet animation starts again. I
want to be able to shoot a new bullet every time I press the space
bar without effecting the bullets that have already been shot.
if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.SPACE)
bullet_right_mc.y = (ball_mc.y -38);
bullet_right_mc.x = (ball_mc.x + 253);
bullet_right_mc.gotoAndPlay("shoot");
Thanks
Ryan

Answer 1

You need to create new instances of the bullt for every use
of the spacebar. To do that you need to have the bullets called in
dynamically from the library.
First you need to designate the bullet mc in the library as
an item that can be loaded dynamically. Right click on it in the
library and select Linkage from the menu that appears. In the
interface that appears, select Export for Actionscript. A Class
name will automatically be assigned, which you can change as you
like (lets just say you name it Bullet). This is the name you will
use to call in the bullets.
When you click OK to close that interface, it will come up
with an indication saying it can't find the class so it will create
one... click OK there to.
Then, your code will become...
if(event.keyCode == Keyboard.SPACE)
var bullet:Bullet = new Bullet();
bullet.y = (ball_mc.y -38);
bullet.x = (ball_mc.x + 253);
this.addChild(bullet);
bullet.gotoAndPlay("shoot");
That code was quick and dirty, so it probably has an error or
two inherent, maybe the last line of it,
so if that fails you could replace it with
this.getChildAt(this.numChildren-1).gotoAndPlay("shoot");
that might fly
In any case, it will at least get you moving towards having
mutliple bullets flying. You can post again if you have a new
problem to solve.