Alright, let’s dive into this “phone booth fights” thing. It was a bit of a head-scratcher at first, but I figured it out, eventually.
So, I started by visualizing what a “phone booth fight” actually is. I mean, it sounds kinda cool, right? I pictured two players crammed into a tiny space, duking it out. My initial thought was a physics-based brawler, maybe with some ragdoll effects for extra laughs.
First things first, I blocked out the environment. I needed a phone booth, obviously. I didn’t want to model it from scratch (ain’t nobody got time for that!), so I grabbed a free model from an asset store. Then, I scaled it down a bit because most of them seemed too big.
Next up, the characters. I used some basic capsule colliders as placeholders. Later on, I planned on swapping them out for something better, but for prototyping, the capsules were perfect. I wrote a super simple script to allow them to move around inside the phone booth. It was clunky at first, with the characters getting stuck on the walls, but I tweaked the movement code until they could kinda jostle around reasonably well.
The real challenge started with the “fighting” part. I considered a bunch of different approaches. Should I go for button mashing? Nah, too simple. Should I implement some complex combo system? Way too much work for this project. Finally, I settled on a simple “whoever hits the button first” system. Each player had a “punch” button, and whoever pressed it first would register a hit. It’s crude, but it got the job done.
Now, to make it more than just button mashing, I added a little bit of strategy. I put a tiny delay on each punch. This meant you couldn’t just spam the button; you had to time your punches to actually connect. I also added a small “knockback” effect, so when a player got hit, they’d stumble backward a bit.
To track the score, I created a simple UI element that showed each player’s health. When a player’s health reached zero, they lost. Game over, man! I made a basic “restart” button, so you could jump right back into another round.
The most hilarious part was the camera. At first, the camera was outside the phone booth, looking in. But it was kinda boring. So, I decided to put the camera inside the phone booth, right behind the players. It made the action feel way more claustrophobic and intense. Seeing two capsule colliders flailing around wildly in a tiny space was strangely funny.
It’s not perfect. The graphics are basic, the gameplay is kinda repetitive, and there are probably a million bugs I haven’t found yet. But hey, it’s a working “phone booth fight” game! And it was a fun little experiment.
Things I learned:
- Keep it simple, especially when prototyping.
- Don’t be afraid to use placeholder assets.
- A well-placed camera can make all the difference.
Overall, this was a good learning experience. Maybe I’ll revisit this project someday and add some more polish. But for now, I’m calling it done. Time for the next crazy idea!
