Creating the Color Drop Casual Puzzle Game - The Essential Guide to Flash Games - page 359

dispatchEvent(new CustomEventScoreBoardUpdate(

CustomEventScoreBoardUpdate.UPDATE_TEXT,Main.SCORE_BOARD_PLAYS,String(plays)));
}
The removeClickedBlocksFromScreen function is pretty straightforward. It contains a while loop
that pops Block objects out of clickedBlocks and then calls removeBlock , passing a reference to
those Block objects so they can be removed from the screen. It also plays the Main.SOUND_BONUS
sound so the player gets some audio feedback from their move.
This function also contains the scoring code for Color Drop. We create a local variable named
pointsPerBlock and set its initial value to the difficulty setting POINTS_PER_BLOCK . Inside the while
loop, we increment pointsPerBlock by BONUS_PER_BLOCK for every connected block as a bonus for
removing more blocks with one move. In our call to addToScore , we pass Math.
floor(pointsPerBlock) , which means the value rounds down until it reaches a whole number. By
rounding, the player would receive one point per Block up until the fifth Block , receive two points per
Block for five to nine blocks, and at for ten blocks or more, receive three points per block, and so on.
This scoring prompts the player to try to configure the blocks to remove more on a single move if
possible, because the score can ramp up pretty quickly on one turn.
public function removeClickedBlocksFromScreen():void {
var blockLength:int = clickedBlocksArray.length-1;
var pointsPerBlock:Number = POINTS_PER_BLOCK;
dispatchEvent( new CustomEventSound(

CustomEventSound.PLAY_SOUND,Main.SOUND_BONUS,false,1,0,1));
while(clickedBlocksArray.length > 0) {
addToScore(Math.floor(pointsPerBlock));
tempBlock = clickedBlocksArray.pop();
removeBlock(tempBlock);
pointsPerBlock += BONUS_PER_BLOCK;
}
}
The addToScore function simply increments score by the value passed, increments levelScore
and then reports those values with dispatched events.
public function addToScore(val:Number):void {
score += int(val);
levelScore += int(val);
dispatchEvent(new CustomEventScoreBoardUpdate(

CustomEventScoreBoardUpdate.UPDATE_TEXT,Main.SCORE_BOARD_SCORE,String(score)));
dispatchEvent(new CustomEventScoreBoardUpdate(
CustomEventScoreBoardUpdate.UPDATE_TEXT,Main.SCORE_BOARD_LEVEL_SCORE,

String(levelScore)));
}
The moveBlocksDown function is the second most intricate function in this game after
findLikeColoredBlocks . The job of this function is to locate the missing blocks that were removed
in removeClickedBlocksFromScreen and update how those missing Block objects relate to the rest
of the Block objects on the screen. This exercise involves finding the missing Block objects in
board, updating the existing Block objects to move into the empty positions left by the removed
Block objects and mark the newly empty positions in the board 2D array as null so that
replaceBlocks can replenish them.
First, we need to iterate through all the rows and columns in board and do it in the most efficient
way we can manage. Because the blocks move down the screen, that means that the lowest
blocks in the on-screen grid are the ones that will have a shorter distance to fall if a Block has