I'm designing a game. I want to model the user interaction after "Cream Babysitting Adventure" by Aval0nX. So the menu at the start of the game will resemble CrStartMenu.png, and the choices and responses will resemble CrChoices.png.
So I'm talking about button-like things made out of a dark-gray (#888) horizontal bar with a black border around it and white text, with the whole thing at somewhere around 50% alpha. Game responses will be white on a colored background with a light-gray border. I don't think I can duplicate the peculiar shading effect that makes the edges of the response look slightly raised, like molding at the top and bottom of a wallboard wall, so I'll just use something that shades from light gray at the inner edge to a darker gray at the outer edge. Now... I know how I'd build this in the Flash IDE: a button made of three images that I can put the text on. But how to do it in Flex/AS3? I looked at the AS3 documentation for SimpleButton, and it looks like I can give it any four DisplayObject (Off, On, Down, Test). At first I thought of using a Shape, where I can simply draw the rectangle and specify the fill color (bgColor argument to beginFill) and line color (borderColor argument to linestyle). But then... what about the text? So now I'm thinking I need some sort of DisplayObjectContainer, right? Or maybe even a Sprite? Then I can add the Shape first, and then a label or some such text object, right? If I add successive DisplayObjects to a VGroup, they go from top to bottom, but if I add DisplayObjects to a Sprite they layer from back to front, right? Or is there a simpler way to do this that I'm not seeing?
