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Interactive Creature Maker prototype


Click above to play . Click on a piece once to grab it - then drag it so the blinking dot is laying on top of one of the dots on the body - then click again.

Wow - I totally forgot I did this. This little piece was an experiment when I was working on my project Jabloo, trying to find my way. At first I was thinking along the lines of an interactive world where you created your main character (like a lot of other game - Spore, most directly) and then use that creature to navigate a world.

I didn't get far before I decided to change directions, but I did work out a little system in Flash to allow the user to pick up a body part and lay it on one of the articulation joints. The interactivity is a little odd - instead of clicking and holding (really, dragging) you click once to grab, click against to release. If you're on a joint, it secures to the body - if not, that piece goes back to its original spot. If you drop a piece on a joint that's already holding a piece, that piece gets replaced.

You can also change the global colors of the piece - I had to make the shadows transparent so that they show through to whatever the main color is behind them. Each joint on the body has an optimum rotation angle, so the pieces always snap to a logical position. And the shadow has to be a generic shape - with a 2D application like Flash, there's no realistic way to make the cast shadow of the creature reflect all the body parts the user chose.

Well, have fun with it. Sorry there's no background, or animation or anything more than some random body part assembly. If I ever add to the piece, you, blog reader, will be the first to know.

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