Hey all,

Here’s the skinned avatar system.
There is no body, don’t try to edit that. It will be added when I get the assets.

Click on the pieces themselves to edit them, or the arrows. Use the categories below the image to change which arrows are showing.

Enjoy.

– Tony.

In the first meeting, the designer and developer we talked with had some good ideas:

Poll / Attendance posts for questions or events – allow users to create interactive posts where other users can vote or say they are/are not attending an event. (I like this idea a lot)

Dynamic posts – RSS or the user can set the caption/text to change after a certain period of time.

Limited user post count – admin setting: limit the number of posts a type of user can have, ie if they can only have 30, when they post #31 then #1 of theirs gets deleted. A system of automated clean up. (Also a good idea)

Heard this in the 2nd meeting as well – doodads changing based on theme automatically – magnets for chalkboard/pins for corkboard/etc.

Upload your own stickers – allow users to upload transparent image files to add to the sticker collection. (Cool idea, back burner for implementation?)

– Tony.

Same as before, but with cleaner code and now scrolling options.

Click the arrows to change the eyes, or pick from the list.

– Tony.

Happy Sunday all,

Here’s a quick proof of concept for the avatar system (shrunken down to fit in the blog). Currently it only has eyes implemented, but the beauty of it is the dynamic nature of the code. It can currently support any number of eyes from 1 to 24 (any more than that and I would need to add a scrolling system, so you can scroll down in the selection box and see the rest). The code reads how many eyes there are, and creates that many options. So if the designers ever want to add/remove eyes (or other features) they just add the image to the movie clip and they’re done.

Also the features are drag-able, so you can position the eyes where ever you want, and we can easily limit where they can be dragged to, even for each different set of eyes (though I’m not sure why we’d want that).

Anyway, enjoy, and let me know of any thoughts/ideas. I’ll bring the full size one with me to the next meeting so you can all see it better.

– Tony.

Serendipitous Posting

Post what you see, see what you post.

Find something while posting something else.

Just a few quick ideas since we were looking for some.

-T

Greetings spacefreaks,

I’ve mapped out a work template for the avatar system. What you posted Liz was very helpful for our train of thought. I’d like to just get a minute with you and the designers to go over exactly what options you all would like to have in terms of avatar features. Once we have the character features nailed down it should be a sinch to develop.

Essentially our avatar system will be a series of movie clips, one for each feature. The options for each user will be contained in an XML file. For example, user #12 will have eyes #4, hair #1, mouth #6, etc.

I’ll go over it all with you guys next meeting. Not much else to put up here since it’s all conceptual at this point.

I have to begin my pre-game rituals now.

– Tony.