The Boxing Simulator

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Inspiration

A few years back, I joined a group heavy-bag class. I fell in love with it, but struggled to find a practical way to practice on my own away from class. There are several other apps/videos out there, but they lack a sense of fun and playfulness.

What it does

This skill coaches you through intense, 3-minute rounds of varying difficulty. The goal is to teach you how to box while having fun.

How I built it

I generated these levels using NodeJS along with the SoxJS library. I then used APL for audio to combine the levels with background music, and other sound. For the coach's voice, I contracted a voice actor and wrote a script.

Challenges I ran into

Level generation was difficult. I was limited by APL's 15 item limit, along with the memory limit for each audio file. I wound up generating 500 levels, compressing them to mp3 format, then uploading them to Amazon S3.

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

I'm most proud of the difficulty setting. I think that I did a decent job making the levels range from fairly easy to incredibly difficult.

What I learned

I learned a lot about the Alexa Skills SDK along this journey.

What's next for The Boxing Simulator

Next, I'd like to clean up some of the rough edges and include more tutorials on the website: theboxingsimulator.com

Built With

• node.js
• sox