Hello,
I have been reading these forums for some time but I believe this is actually my first post. We have developed an online multilayer 3rd person game over the past few months. The project has gained popularity and we are ready for phase 2. I was hoping to get your advice on a high level solution of what we are trying to do.
Situation:
Currently the game only has one character. A “character” is just a .swf file with animations at different point in the time line. Then there are sub-mc’s within the .swf to move different body parts. Example: a character can have a face_mc within the body_mc so he can “jump” while “crying” for example. …
Objective:
We need to give the characters more “life” by giving them more animations such as “stand up” “sit down” “cry” etc. However, we ALSO need to allow our customers to customize their characters by giving them “Ornaments” (ex: glasses, watch, martini glass…) or “Skins” (ex: changing their face color, eyebrow color…).
The primary objective is that this should be scalable. We do not want to touch the Main flash file, instead, just place a character.swfs in a folder with a pre-defined format definition and the Main flash will load in characters and “ornaments” on demand. The Main flash and the character.swf are developed by two independent entities.
Advice needed:
I have been scratching my head over this for a while. Is this objective achievable within the flash framework? Is there such a thing as “applying skins” to characters? How can I have an animated character…then suddenly add a “hat” on his head that would follow his head? I would love to talk to experts in this area!
Thinking out loud:
The “hat” mc would have to be pulled in by the face_mc which is part of the body_mc which is pulled by the Main for example. Then the hat mc would have its X and Y set to a predefined registration point on the face_mc. As the face moves. the hat tracks face movement. The skins will just be a change to the .tint property of an MC. Ideally we are trying to get to this level of OOP simplicity in the Main:
//after loading the Character1
Character1.doAnimation(“stand up”)
Character1.addOrnament(“hat”)
Character1.doAnimation(“sit down”)
…etc
Sorry for the long thread. I hope I am not inventing the wheel here and there is a norm way of doing this stuff. Our programmers are fairly experienced with AS3, but they have never gone into this realm before. I just do not want to wonder off trying to implement a solution from the grounds up without seeing whats out there first! Any tips appreciated!
Thanks
djskimo
