The CLICK event is fired when the mouse button is released, one single time. The MOUSE_DOWN event is fired as soon as the mouse button is pressed down—also one single time—rather than waiting for it to be released. So, you can think of the Mouse.CLICK event as being when released and the Mouse.MOUSE_DOWN event as being when pressed.

That's why you were previously getting undesirable behaviour.

Hey,

Sorry about a slow response. I've been busy.

I'm not really sure what it is you're trying to do. (That 'seconds' variable isn't declared in your snippets, so I don't know what it's for.) If all you want to do is track which iframe the mouse cursor is over, you only need the mouseenter/mouseleave events. This JS code would work:

function onEnterIFrame(iframe, event) {
  console.log("Entered Frame:", iframe.id);
}


function onExitIFrame(iframe, event) {
  console.log("Exited Frame:", iframe.id);
}


Array.prototype.forEach.call(
  document.body.querySelectorAll("iframe"),
  function(itr) {
    itr.addEventListener("mouseenter", onEnterIFrame.bind(null, itr));
    itr.addEventListener("mouseleave", onExitIFrame.bind(null, itr));
  }
);

Here's a working example of that: https://tystuff.com/if.html

If that doesn't work, I'd need a bit more information regarding what it is you're trying to do.

That is what a prologue should do, but you said your prologue has "LITERALLY" nothing to do with your story; nothing, nothing at all, to do with what follows. A prologue is an introduction to a story so it makes no sense to introduce something unrelated to what follows. Prologues are, generally, optional reading by their very nature but they're never unrelated.

So why is your prologue not related to the story?

If the events themselves are important to you, the author, then you should rework them so they fit the narrative that will follow. Maybe make them foreshadow future events, or establish themes and/or characters, or establish a motif, or something. What's the point of telling a small, minor story that, by our own admission, means nothing and serves no purpose?

If you want to give the reader an insight into the setting of your story, writing an introduction that has nothing to do with said story or setting isn't going to do that. Making the events of your prologue matter and echo throughout the story and, however, will. And your readers will enjoy your story all the more.

I want to stress how I am only doing precisely what you requested:

I'm not sure you've asked yourself why your prologue exists, so that's what I'm asking you: Why did you write it? What is it you are working toward with that prologue? Why did those events happen and what made them happen? What purpose do those events serve?

If you can answer those questions and incorporate those answers into your story, I promise you your writing will improve.

Why did you write an introduction to your story that has nothing to do with your story?

I misread what you wrote when I responded with this sentence. I thought you meant the entirety of the story is intended for a child audience, missing you said the story is intended for adults (or YA) in real life; missing the 'in-universe' bit.

My post is too old to edit in this clarification so that's all this reply is for.

You didn't state it's a story intended for children nor does it read like one. Not wanting to describe death in detail to children is fair, but it still doesn't make sense that nobody is reacting to being surrounded by an inferno. Look at the story of Pinocchio: there's very real, raw emotion when his friend is turned into a donkey even thought it's a children's story. The scene where his grandfather is chased by the whale is even more raw and real. Children's stories need emotions, too.

Simply put: your characters aren't responding to external stimuli—that's ineffective storytelling regardless of the age of the intended audience.

I was not rude once in my critique; I was blunt. I told you what I felt worked, what didn't, and offered explanations as to why. Your writing is never going to improve if you don't want a light being shown on its problems. I'm not attacking you or your ability to write; I'm critiquing what you wrote in this instance. I'm trying to get you to see the problems from an outside perspective so you can fix them.

You asked for feedback, I gave it. Don't take critiques personally.

To highlight that I practice what I preach: look at this response to part of a story I wrote. It is far, far more scathing than what I wrote here and below his two comments you will see my response. And using that feedback, and others, I did further revisions and improved my writing.

I can tell. My primary point was you need to proofread and revise your work by highlighting the issues a lack of proofreading and revisions can create. Put more thought and effort into your storytelling; make the scene and characters real; make the stakes feel real. You have two huge armies engaging in a massive war, dedicated to said war to the point they're risking their safety by fighting it in the middle of a massive fire. You have the makings of tension and stakes there, but you don't do anything with it.

Having said that: if you don't want a critique of your writing—or specifically don't want it from me—then I won't post future breakdowns of issues I see in anything you post. My intention is not, and never will be, to upset you.

Good luck with your story. Keep writing.

I read your prologue and it has a few problems. First off is starting out with a cliché: Once upon a time. There's pretty much no good reason to ever write those words in narration at the start of a story; it doesn't add anything and can be safely removed.

Another issue I noticed is the armies don't behave like battling armies, or people, for that matter. Why would two armies battle each other inside a thick forest? That would make military tactics virtually impossible. Rather than being able to form a phalanx they would be scattered about. Archers and cavalry would also be useless. I can't imagine any half-competent general ordering their army to fight in a forest, let alone two of them doing it. If one was foolish enough to order their troops into the trees the other would likely just wait on the other side and shoot arrows at the ones escaping (or just set the whole thing on fire and watch them burn, but more on that in a second). It didn't seem realistic that both the entire armies would stop dead, immediately, just because a civilian was in the middle of the forest. Why does every single fighter care? Not one would prefer to keep fighting? How did the entirety of both armies so quickly become aware she was even there? Troops only a hundred feet from the front line would have no way of seeing or hearing her.

The forest being on fire didn't make sense to me. How did the forest fire start? Why are the armies not burning to death? Why are they not dying from smoke inhalation? Are there no animals scattering about, fleeing the fire? The fire doesn't seem to serve any purpose other than giving the woman something to do (i.e. extinguish it). There should also be some type of reaction from the soldiers given the danger of being in a forest fire.This is what being in a forest fire is like. I didn't get any sense of the sheer amount of danger the fire would present everyone involved.

You also have way too many ellipses, and none of them are used correctly except for here:

I'd recommend getting rid of all of them except that one and to not use them outside of dialogue.

How did a whisper drown out people screaming? Also, you just a few sentences before described the forest as having fallen silent: 'the soldiers all froze... the forest fell silent'. So there's nothing for her voice to drown out.

What clearing? The setting has only been described as a thick forest. If they're no longer surrounded by trees that should be made clear.

Describing events as 'could be heard/seen/felt' pulls the reader out of what's happening; it puts them at a distance. You can convey the same information without doing that:

As she spoke, a gale from the south rushed toward her and the two armies, snapping branches and felling trees.

Strong verbs like 'gale' convey imagery better than a normal verb with an adjective like 'hellish wind'. And words like 'quickly' should be removed whenever possible; adverbs are, generally, not your friend in writing. They can be useful but more often than not you want a strong verb rather than an adverb.

The primary issue with that sentence, though, is that it's telling rather than showing. If the wind is so strong and fast that it is clearly perceptible by sound alone, describe the wind doing something that could easily be heard.

Some of your writing, like this, is a bit of a trudge. This is good imagery but you're relying on two separate similes in the same sentence to convey it. The use of passive voice here is also slowing it down, taking away its significance. Consider tightening it up, something like this:

Rain shot straight down from the sky like bullets, piercing the armour and flesh of the soldiers.

This reads like a first draft in need of several revisions: there's a lot of grammatical errors and missing/misused punctuation, and a few wrong word choices (e.g. 'a hellish wind from the sound could be heard') that read like something auto-correct threw in. I can only assume that was meant to be 'south'.

The ideas behind it all, while not very original, are fine; but the execution needs work. Flesh out your characters and events. Think how real people would behave in a situation like this, and write that. Resist the temptation to get right to the exciting climax because it will lose its punch without a solid build-up.

I do not agree

A haiku I cannot do

I lack such a skill.

My words you call slew

Have nothing to say or do

To read this needs will.

Wait one second now

I may have done it like you

Holy cow, haiku.

It's been a while since I've posted my work here and I've improved considerably—in my own opinion, at least—so I'd like to again start sharing my work. (Even if said work is incomplete.)

I'm currently working on three short stories. One is more polished than the other two (and is presently longer) but all three are still refined enough to be worth reading. I'm curious which of the three piques the most interest, if at all.

Long Pork of Long Island is the longer, more refined of the three. It's a horror story about two guys traveling to an island.

These two are very short because I'm still working on the characters and themes. I've figured out most of what the story is about but haven't gotten too far with good, proper writing yet. That said, they're still both 1100 words and 600 words, respectively.

Hunters Vortex is a bit of a horror story, though I'm planning on it mostly being suspense. I'm unsure if I should go for a western setting or modern day that just happens to be in a desert environment.

Friendly Flannan, I'll Say is going to be a detective/mystery story inspired by true events. All of the events in the story will be fiction but said true events will exist in-universe, which the characters will be aware of.

Feel free to tell me what you do like, don't like; anything. I welcome any and all feedback—it's extremely helpful.

If you did like them: Which of the three did you find most interesting/engaging? If they were all finished, complete, which would you want to read before the other two?

Thanks.

I'm not sure if you wrote this in JavaScript or ActionScript (for Flash) but it doesn't matter because they're the same language under the hood, so I'll reference only JavaScript here but everything applies to ActionScript as well.

There isn't much you can do besides trying to convert the string to a number and then checking the result. However, you can easily ensure you that always get an actual number at the end no matter what by exploiting a property of how JavaScript's || operator works:

var userNum = Number(userInput.value) || 0;

The NaN value is considered falsey, so if any value that the user gives is no valid that assignment will be the equivalent of this:

var userNum = NaN || 0;

In JS, if there is a falsey value to the left of the || operator (i.e. the left operand) then the value to the right (i.e. the right operand) will be returned, regardless of whether that value is falsey as well. So, that will end up assigning the value 0 if Number() ever encounters a NaN value.

But, if Number() returns a valid number like this:

var userNum = Number("42") || 0;

it will return the left operand because it is truthy.

Probably not. Flash is dead, and furthermore Flash MX is like 15 years old so nobody uses it and, anyway, it's unlikely a developer would want to use any of the Flash suites for development (such as Flash MX or the newer Adobe Flash versions, or the most recent Adobe Animate) as those are intended for animations, not games or development.

Depends on what you're making and what skillsets the developer has, but generally you'd be making assets and exporting them into a format that can easily be read by code (unlikely to by SWF format.) If it's a 2D game a common approach is to just create spritesheets (you can also use tools such as TexturePacker to generate them for you from individual images.)

I doubt it. SWF files would be a pain in the ass to read from for the purpose of importing assets into a game engine.

You can continue using Flash MX to create assets if you want (or look into something more modern) but I'd recommend looking into how to export your art assets into formats that can easily be read (PNGs are very common.) You can take a look at GameDev Market's 2D asset store to see how they are formatted. There's lots of free assets, so you can grab those and look at how those artists exported their assets.