stop more than one object of same movieclip all at once in flash

Question

I am generating childs of the same movieclip over and over again after some specific time difference. At any instance, i require all the movieclips on stage to pause at once and play again after another interval. Any suggestion on how may I do that? I am using flash professional CS5.5 and actionscript 3.0.

Answer 1

Each time you generate a new child, push it to an array:

var myArray:Array = new Array();
function makeChildren() {
    var newChild:MovieClip = new originalMC();
    myArray.push(newChild);
    addChild(newChild);
}

Then you'll have access to all the generated movieclips to do with as you please. When you need to pause or play them all, just run a for each loop:

for each(var myVar in myArray) {
  myVar.pause(); // or myVar.play();
} 

Sound like what you're looking for?

Answer 2

I you are unable to keep all object in the same array, you could scan the display list recursively and check each single object:

function lookRecursively( target : DisplayObjectContainer ) : void
{        
  for ( var i:int = 0, l:int = target.numChildren; i < l; i++ ) {
    var child:DisplayObject = target.getChildAt(i);
    if ( child is DisplayObjectContainer ) {
      if ( DisplayObjectContainer(child).numChildren > 0 ) {
        if ( child is SOME_OBJECT_CLASS_HERE ) {
          // do what you gotta do here...
        } else {
          lookRecursively( DisplayObjectContainer ( child ) );
        }
      }
    }
  }
}