Hello all, forum newbie here! Not only that, but I'm also pretty new to intermediate Actionscript too so please please please, talk to me as if I were a four year old! Now my problem

I'm stuck. I am creating a presentation for a friend who works in the field of science. I've promised results before Friday :eek: I'm trying to get Actionscript to engage a timeline effect from an external text document containing specific data in an array format. So basically I have created a map of London divided by its postcodes eg: NW2, SE12, E2... Graphically, there are two layers to this representation of London, a complete map of every postcode in London grouped together in light grey beneath (see pic1), and on top a layer with each seperate postcode created as an individual movie with an alpha state of 0 (as in named by its instance as the postcode it represents) which, when triggered by the array is highlighted in red on the map (see pic2).


pic1


pic2

Sorry about the pictures but thought it's the best way to explain what I mean! I have some script I got from Flashkit to trigger the data from an external file to highlight corrosponding areas of london by its postcode.

Below is an example of the data in the external text document:

Code: Select all

estados1=
estados2=
estados3=N15=
estados4=
estados5=
estados6=
estados7=
estados8=N22=
estados9=SE1=

There is more data than that I want to represent, 153 lines of it to be exact (152 including zero). This is the actionscript from the movie:

Code: Select all

dir = new LoadVars();
dir.load("thedata.txt");
dir.onLoad = text;
function text() {
	adjustment = new Array();
	adjustment = dir.estados1.split("-");
	tamano = adjustment.length;
	for (i=1; i<=tamano; i++) {
		color = new Color(adjustment[i-1]);
		map = new Object();
		map = {ra:0, rb:120, ga:0, gb:0, ba:0, bb:0, aa:50, ab:0};
		color.setTransform(map);
	}
}

Now, the movie works except that it does not invoke a timeline at present. That is to say, I want to have the data from the text document load over a period of time. "estados1" should be what is represented on the map for frame 1 and "estados2" for frame 5 "estados3" for frame 10 etc (although ideally I would like to have it be a smooth transition so that if postcode EC1 is being introduced from the external data file it fades in and then fades out before the next set of data is represented). At the moment what happens is that the movie simply loads everything in in one chunk, every postcode is there. My friend would like to see it develop on screen in realtime. Does anybody here have any suggestions? Any help would be appreciated

d-kam.

EDIT: Forgot to explain that "estados*" is a consecutive day reference so in effect the movie has 153 days in it. I hope this all makes sense!