Disclaimer: This demo was made in a week.

SmashMMO began as an assignment to create a Flash animation with a strong interactive emphasis. Given two weeks, I said to myself, “Sure, I can make a Massively-Multiplayer Online fighting game.” Although I quickly scaled back my aspirations, the name that I originally conceived stuck: SmashMMO.

Two things that I’m particularly proud of: the camera, and the physics engine. Although it’s a little hard to tell (since there are SO many characters…), there is a fairly sophisticated bit of code in there that allows each character to have a different mass and levels of power, causing other characters to be thrown accordingly. Of the two characters in the demo, each are unique, even though they look similar. The one on the left is light, quick, and medium powered. The one on the right is very powerful, yet also very heavy, which can be noticed the most in his movements. It takes a lot more to get him going.

You may notice that on the title screen, the game has the subtitle of The Return. Originally, there was a huge storyline that I created, involving a ministry and populace that worshiped the Twelve Tones, who sought to discover the true meaning of the universe, life, etc by devoting their lives to said tones. One minister sought enlightenment by leaving the main community and traveling the world. When he returned, his prized pupil, who had since matured and become a minister himself, noticed a change in his former master that eluded all others. The master had somehow become corrupted, and had fallen from the righteous path of the true Twelve Tones. His pupil decided it was his responsibility to prevent his former master’s corruption from enslaving the rest of the world.

But I didn’t have time to flesh out the story aspect.

The goal is to knock your opponent off the screen and have them kersplode. It’s a little unbalanced (ok, maybe a lot).

The controls are simple enough, but there are some things not readily apparent. It’s basically a big game of rock paper scissors. You have three attacks, yellow, purple, and red. You also have three directions, forward, up, and down (you have to be in the air for up and down attacks to work). If both players attack each other with the same color, the damage done is minimal. If one player attacks with a relatively higher attack (ie. attack with rock, opponent attacks with scissors), then double damage.

There are also two bonus hidden attacks. Each time you attack your opponent and land a hit, you’ll hear a horn hit, each sounding a successively higher note in the scale. The highest sounding hit gives you and attack bonus! The other hidden attack is when performing the up attack. If you jump and attack upwards, you’ll do a rotating upward kick. However! There is a little spark that appears near your shoe. If you hit your opponent while that spark is showing, you’ll deal double damage and get a special sound effect. Yay!

P.S. They’re fleas.