Shawn's AppWeek post inspired me to write one too. AppWeek is our chance to be creators for a little while and it was a lot of fun. I didn't set out to build something nearly as ambitious as "Super Avatar Sample Smashup EXTREME! - 'Capture the Cat' edition", but I did get to take a swing at a game I've wanted to build for a while: Rock'em Sock'em Avatars Avatar Boxing. Avatars, being a new feature in this release, were an unwritten requirement for all of the AppWeek games. Between SASSECTCE, my game, and the many others, Avatars were chasing cats, beating each other up, play futuristic sports, falling off buildings, dancing in a cloud of gems, being launched from canons to save the world, and much more. All this excitement was almost too much for a bunch of exhausted engineers, but that's what the beer was for during the game unveilings.
Here's what the game looked like with the basic animations wired up. You'll notice that the avatars have been hitting the gym. That's because their arms were too short to reach each other! I added a little extra bulk because I was laughing too hard not to. I directly bound the game pad triggers to the shoulder and elbow joints and rigged up the chase camera sample to inspect my work. There wasn't much game play yet, but it was already fun. That's always a good sign.
Even with just one week, I decided to invest some time into debugging visualizations. That turned out to be a really great idea.
Then, I added some collision spheres for the heads, hands, and upper bodies. This was a hacky, trial and error process. Thankfully, C# compiles quickly.
At this point, I spent an entire day working on the physics. I wanted the avatars to bounce/wobble when they got hit, so I rigged up some complex spring systems. Things were starting to work, but I'm generally pretty bad at this sort of thing and my simulation routinely exploded. The avatars arms went shooting off into space and I was getting pretty frustrated. No screen shots of that chaos because I am embarrassed.
With half a day to go, I added the obligatory damage bars and some rudimentary hand-to-head collision detection.
I was feeling pretty good about the game, despite my physics failures, it was pretty fun anyway. I wondered down the hall to chat with Jace, who had just added sound effects to his game. His game was hilarious before, but the sound effects were priceless. I ejected the sound effect CD out of his machine, yoinked it, and took off running. An hour later (and 10 minutes after the deadline), my game had some sweet punch and miss sounds. I also made the avatars' heads pop up when their damage bar was full, accompanied by an awesome zip-tie sound.
At our team happy hour, I'd like to think Avatar Boxing was a fan favorite. I certainly had fun making it! I hope everyone enjoys Avatar support in the new XNA Game Studio.
