One of the original concepts that I wanted in Fists of Justice was the ability of the player to create their own character to use in the game. Ever since I was playing 2D beat em ups on the Genesis, I wanted to be able to play one of these games as a character that I made. I had scrapped the concept initially because I thought it would be too hard to implement.

However, last friday I was working on the game, and I realized that if I seperated the different pieces of the characters body, reassembling them at run time and filling them in with the XNA color system, it just might work. So, I altered the sprites, changed the drawing code, and...well, here's a character I made using the new custom character system in-game:


I tried to make him look like me...well, me if I had any muscle and didn't have to wear glasses[grin]

The custom character system, or "Character Profiles" as I call them in the code, allow the user to choose their characters hair, eyes, clothes, pants, skin color, hair color, and the color of their clothes. This means that the player will be able to create their very own characters for use in the game. That, combined with the RPG elements I'm planning to have in the game, will make some sort of Oblivion meets 2D beat em up...thing.

It's also cool because I'll be able to have the enemies appearences be randomly, or semi-randomly generated (random face, but same clothes, for instance). Also, this will make creating new character sprites alot easier, although I still have to draw all the different parts of the characters.

Now I need to make a "Create a Character" menu, that the player will be shown when they start up the game.