Create your own Virtual World - Step1

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After thousands of requests asking "How did you create Penguin Chat?". I have decided to publish a series of posts on how to create a simple little virtual world. Here is a list of skills and tools that you will need to create a virtual world:

  • Adobe Flash

  • A Programmer (Actionscript)

  • An Artist/Animator

  • A Server (We will discuss this later)

  • Time

Step 1 - Characters

I start every world with the character. The character is what the player will become, and interact with every day. Your character must delight the player. Here are some ideas for selecting a character:

  • Keep your characters simple.

  • Select a character that can be both a boy or girl.

  • Leave room for the player's imagination.

For this series, I plan to create a virtual world based on Rubber Ducks.

RubberDuck-Character1

RubberDuck-Character1

Let's get to work!

  1. Open Flash and create a new file.

  2. Create an empty Movie Clip with 8 frames.

  3. Start drawing!

  4. Each frame is the direction your character is facing. Frame1: South, Frame2: Southwest, Frame3: West, Frame4: Northwest, Frame5: North, Frame6: Northeast, Frame7: East, Frame8: Southeast

  5. It is very important that your character stands on the (0,0) position. This is where their feet should touch the ground.

  6. Now position the Movie Clip on your stage (0,0)

  7. Give your Movie Clip the instance name: "character"

Trick: Frames 2-4 can be flipped to create frames 6-8

Feel free to post your questions, next week we will create the World!