Character Creation Screen
Feb 13, 2015
Hi guys, one of the ideas I've had for adding to the personal aspect of E-Learning is creating a character creation screen. We have an incredibly talented artist on our team who has devised a base male and base female, of all ethnicities, and various different pieces of clothing and hairstyles. They are all interchangeable. My logic to create a character creation screen is as follows: (I'm not entirely sure how to write a file using Articulate, or if it's even possible)
1. Create variables for each... well variable. Clothing/hair/ethnicity etc.
2. Assign the variable to a certain state. i.e if Clothing = 1 then the state of Clothing is Clothing #1 - Jacket etc.
3. This is the part I'm not sure how to do. Assign the state for each individual item. I guess I'd just load the default character onto each slide, and the state would be changed upon load of the slide.
Is this the right workflow? Or can you guys offer any alternate options?
Cheers guys.
12 Replies
Will the character be in a number of poses, or will it simply be a badge?
How many combinations are you looking at?
Poses are an option, but not absolutely necessary, I think we have about 5 or 6 options per variable, not accounting colours, so probably a lot more.
I've done it actually. Even with poses I know how to do code that too. My only worry is the increase in file size this will probably make. As a lot of variable instructions will have to go on already chunky slides if there's ever a character involved.
Anyway, here's a demo of what I've done. (The clothing doesn't fit right as we haven't created the clothing yet, but the hair is fine... maybe my positioning is off but it's fine haha)
Slide 2 is to show it "saves". Pres Prev after viewing slide 2 and change the hair and clothes and go back to slide 2 to see it update!
http://s3.amazonaws.com/tempshare-stage.storyline.articulate.com/stp19e1t8gc71g9e7e415qu1hkk1t9r4/story.html
Very cool Jordan...thanks for sharing
Cool example Jordan - thanks for sharing! If you're able to share the source file (.story) that would be great as well so that folks could take a look "under the hood"
Under the hood file as requested :) (updated with sex and skin tone changes)
I should also say the graphics used are NOT freeware. They are owned by the company I work for and can not be used commercially by anybody else.
Woo hoo...thanks!
Thanks Jordan!
Neat demo, Jordan. Only thing that's noticeable is the "flash of unclothed character" on the second slide. I don't think you'll see this at all when you're finished since it's caused by the background image loading really quickly.
By adding the character to a master slide, this character build setup should provide a lot of utility.
Added sex and skin tone changes. It's just a s*** tonne of variables really, it's simple stuff, just takes a while to do. Still waiting on different/complete clothing and hairstyles from our illustrator but you can see the bare bones.
So Steve, say the 2nd slide there is the "master slide", I could reference that slide whenever a character pops up instead of having to write every single variable on each slide?
Yeah. The master slide could contain the character in a particular position / location on the screen. This way you could build your slide around that without the need to replicate all of the character triggers.
One trick I've used for things that load is to add my triggers into an object instead of the timeline. This provides you with some flexibility and will allow you to copy and paste your whole group of stuff, triggers and all, from one slide to another or to the master slide.
Any chance you could steal my demo and make your own demo of this in action?
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