AS3 remove tween before MOTION_FINISH via the movieclip

Question

I've been fumbling with this issue for a bit. I've got a lovely little tooltip movieclip that follows the user's mouse for a few seconds before it removes itself. My problem is that if there is one already there I remove it, however, I cannot seem to remove the MOTION_FINISH event and it still fires and possibly deletes a new tooltip.

What I want is to essentially put in a line item such as var tween(smallhelp_panel).deleteAll(); I saw a tweenlight function killtweensof(mc); However I've used the tweens I've incorporated below throughout my 30k lines of AS3 code.

Here is my tooltip handler. I call it with a simple

Main_Warning("Please don't forget to save!",5);

My movieclip is a 'smallhelp_panel' and I check if it already exists and remove it. However, the alpha and MOTION_FINISH tweens still exist and cause issues with any new smallhelp_panels.

public function Main_Warning( the_text:String, myTimer:int = 4){
        if(smallhelp_panel != null){
                stage.removeChild( smallhelp_panel );
                removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, trackmouse);
                smallhelp_panel = null;
            }
        smallhelp_panel = new small_help();
        smallhelp_panel.name = "myWarning";
        smallhelp_panel.x = mouseX - 50;
        smallhelp_panel.y = mouseY + 15;
        smallhelp_panel.helptext.text = the_text;
        stage.addChild( smallhelp_panel );
        addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, trackmouse);
        var myTween:Tween;

        myTween = new Tween(smallhelp_panel, "alpha", None.easeOut, 1, 0, myTimer, true);
        tweenholder = myTween;
        tweenArray.push(tweenholder);
        myTween.addEventListener(TweenEvent.MOTION_FINISH, removeTween);
    }

That is my Tooltip handler.

for reference purposes my tween remover is:

public function removeTween(e:TweenEvent = null):void{
        e.target.removeEventListener(TweenEvent.MOTION_FINISH, removeTween);
        if(smallhelp_panel != null){
            removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, trackmouse);
            stage.removeChild( smallhelp_panel );
            smallhelp_panel = null;
        }
    }

and my mouse tracker that moves the tooltip with the mouse is a simple:

public function trackmouse(e:Event):void{
        smallhelp_panel.x = mouseX - 50;
        smallhelp_panel.y = mouseY + 15;
    }

Answer 1

That's because you've added your MOTION_FINISH event listener to the tween, not to the panel. You remove the panel, if one already exists, but the tween still exists in the tweenholder and tweenArray variables - and fires a MOTION_FINISH event, when its calculations are finished. Your event listener method doesn't know which tween the event came from, and correctly removes the help panel.

To fix this, either remove the tween and event listener along with the help panel in your Main_Warning function, or modify the removal block in your event listener method:

public function removeTween(e:TweenEvent = null):void{
    e.target.removeEventListener(TweenEvent.MOTION_FINISH, removeTween);
    // --- this will check if the Tween belongs to the panel on the stage!
    if (smallhelp_panel && e.target.obj == smallhelp_panel ) { 
    // ---
        removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, trackmouse);
        stage.removeChild( smallhelp_panel );
        smallhelp_panel = null;
    }
    // --- NOW remove the tween from the array (all of them should be removed after use)
    tweenArray.splice (tweenArray.indexOf (e.target), 1); 
}

I don't understand exactly why you would need both a tweenholder and a tweenArray variable, though ;)