Character Creation

[bombingTokyo]

So i have been out of the loop for what seems like forever, and I have recently decided to update all of my abandoned projects in Actionscript 3. One of those projects is a character creation system. The original problem with the creation system was that I was essentially making a character matrix where each head, torso, etc... was linked together using a numerical values to represent the character. All of the information was stored in MySQL and I used a php/xml socket server to parse the data. I was getting only about 10-14 FPS on the localhost, and all the animations and keys were out of sync.

So here is my question, is this possible in AS3? or is there a better way to create this system for an isometric game? Do i need to drop the php server and create a lighter/faster server with Java or C++?

If i'm being too vague, let me know and I can add more information later. Kinda' at work now, and I suppose I need to start doing something constructive.

[snottlebocket]

Why would you need sockets for character creation? Wouldn't it be enough to only contact the database to retrieve and store character changes? Once the character is 'assembled' all the parts and animations can be local.

[bombingTokyo]

It was in place for the multiplayer portion I never got around to finishing. When I tried just using one single load from the database, a few elements of the character kept disappearing. Which was probably just bad coding; however, once I loaded the sockets I had no more problems with the character elements...just the framerate issues (from the constant redrawing). I had the same problem with buildings in the beginning, because I tried to use a backface culling script I ported from Java.

The original file was created in Flash MX, I don't think that it had any thing to do with the original problem though.

But like I said, I'm rewriting it. What do you think would be the best way? The matrix idea was terrible, and very confusing.

[bluemagica]

Actually the matrix idea isnt very bad if coded wisely, cause i am using the same thing for my own game! However, since you are porting to as3, i would suggest loading the image matrix from the database, but doing the animation and such locally! In a multiplayer game, you must always try to keep the client-server communication to minimum! Since you are up for a multiplayer framework, you might consider doing a blob for the animations, but still, load them once, and then do them locally on clientside! Dont try to synch graphic-rich heavy stuff or else even your average java servers can come to their knees, let alone php!