Adventure Creator - Make 3D adventure games (DEMO, VIDEO, WEBSITE)

Chris, or whoever... I am going through the tutorials and as in an earlier post I am not getting the hotspot labels to display nor is the speech text displaying... I deleted my old speech manager and created a new one and that didn't help. I also turned off scrolling as someone else mentioned and that didn't help either, so I know it's something simple with my managers but I can't seem to figure it out...

BTW I created my managers before I started and copied them to the tutorial/managers folder so I know I got that right, and when I click on the speech tab I can see my speech manager asset there...

Thanks for the great plugin and thanks for any help.


Also I'm working in 1.22

 

just scratching on the surface, but i like it so far!

one thing i noticed: when you have a moving camera, and the character hits a trigger (with an action which switchs to a new cam) there is pretty heavy break in the camera movement.... as soon as it hits it, the current movement totally stops, then starts the transition to the new camera..
which really breaks the flow, and kinda looks crappy.

would it be possible to inherit the existing camera motion and add it to the transition? (maybe a optional checkbox?)

thanks for this nice asset!

 

Just put demo_menumanager as menu manager asset file. Problem with using your own menus is that's just an empty file, which you'll quickly realize is bad if you look at all the stuff in the demo manager.

(Psst... Chris you might want to add that to the youtube tutorials as a note, as everyone will have this problem.)

 

Thanks that worked!

Then that begs the question of how do you add new elements to the new menumanager so you can get it to work... is there a tutorial with this?

Also where do I set font styles and size of font for the menus and speech text..

Again thanks adventurefan!

And thanks Chris... wonderful plugin....

 

Just noticed an issue with triggers in 2D games: they need to be set up in 3D space to encompass a portion of the navmesh and consequently, due to the way character navigation works in 3D perspective, the character can 'enter' the trigger region even though they are quite a distance off in the Unity Game window.

I've attached an image illustrating the issue (if the image doesn't open when clicked, right-click then select 'View Image').



I noticed another peculiarity with 3D navmeshes in 2D games: at the far edges of the mesh, the character often only needs to traverse a very short distance (in 3d) to walk from the rear of the scene to the foreground, covering a lot of ground in a very short time; at other times, the character will need to cover a great distance diagonally across the navmesh to walk from the rear of the scene to the foreground, which means they move a lot more slowly.

These are both problems that would be solved by a 2d navmesh. In the meantime though, are there any ways around either of these issues?

 

Hi Chris,

my Problem with the Dialogoptions not appearing as text has been solved. It worked out like this. I had to delete the dialoglist settings from the demo and create a new one with the dialoglist. My fault was trying to change the already set Item-Dialogoptions (buttonstyle) on the fly which dosen't work.

Big question tough...

Multiple Scenes?
How to setup multiple scenes and navigate between them (seen the action: engine, load scene). And do I need new managers for every scene? Can't find a tutorial on that or any information in the manual.


Feature Request: Quest based journal
What about a simple questbased journal where you can add simple textlines with a checkbox checked/unchecked (or provide a texture for both states) telling the player in a list which things to be done and which are already done. Maybe like this
[checked ] Find new lunch for bird
[unchecked] Get lunch back from bird

And adding a new action for the action list like "set journalentry checked", "set journalentry unchecked"?

(Besides... I'm working in 2D Space)

 

Did this stuff already so I'll explain it. You don't use new managers.

Just add triggers for the player to hit to change scene. Put the action for it to engine: change scene.

Now to get a number for scenes to be identified, you add all your scenes in file>build settings. Then you can control scene change with AC.

Now if you have multiple entry points for a scene, you could add events in your scene onstart stuff to check where the entry place should be. For example use engine: check previous scene. If condition is met: continue. If not: skip (past your next event which is the correct marker set for this) Then object teleport, is player, select the marker correct if you came from previous scene identified.

That's pretty much all you need for that.

 

Not for the moment, I'm afraid. Adventure Creator is still rather new, and the feature set is quite a way larger than it was when it was released at the same price.

Try using the Variable: Check Action inside the Cutscene on variable change cutscene to see if your variable is what you want.

I may update the prefabs at some point, so I'd like the connection to remain if possible. Perhaps disconnect it based on an toggle option?

Thanks for the link. I will take a look into solving this, however I need to be clear that if the solution involves resetting existing ActionList data, I can't replace the code, as it will reset everyone's game logic. Otherwise, we'd better get voting for Polymorphic Serialization!

Go to the Scene Manager and use the Visibility panel to hide all Hotspots except the one you have selected.

PlayerInput is where all input is read and stored. Look for OnMouseDown calls in there.

Whoops!

No problem - set your Interaction Method (in the Settings Manager) to Choose Interaction Then Hotspot. You'll have to make a new Menu to display the verbs. Define each Verb in the Cursor Manager, then display each verb in your Menu by creating a MenuInteraction element and selecting that verb.

Could you PM a sample scene that demonstrates this?

In the Menu Manager, look for the Subtitles Menu. You may want to duplicate the manager asset first, so that your changes aren't reverted after an update.

Development on the top-down 2D mode we discussed is going well, and would be better suited to this type of game. It'll take less time to get this out the door rather than solve these specific issues. Hopefully it should be available this week - please hold off until then, if you can.

Just add your scenes to the Build Settings, and call them in the Engine: Change scene Action. You'll need to reference the scene number, rather than name.

Perhaps. With the other requests I've been getting, I'm afraid this will be quite far down the prority list.

 

Hi Chris, is it possible to turn on/off a character npc's hotspot by actions? I need it off at certain times so you can't trigger talk, etc at a bad time.

edit: solved, see next page if you're looking for answer

 

My list of issues:

_1 So when I try to drag something from inventory to interact with an object the sprite just vanishes instead of traveling with the cursor.

_2 Inventory to Sprite object Interaction Never Fires. (With or without a collider on the sprite.)

_3 Hot Spot Vicinity detection doesn't work at all when set to Touchscreen.

Any help would be Appreciated.

 

Choose Object: Send Message, set the receiver of the message as the hotspot, and then choose either Turn On or Turn Off.

 

Only with that trouble is the NPC doesn't actually have a hotspot. They have the hotspot script attached. I tried to send message to the interaction it uses but that doesn't work.

 

Hmm yeah something sounds wrong here. Characters require a collider, and as long as the Hotspot is on the same object, messaging Turn On and Turn Off should switch that object between your Default layer and Ignore Raycast layer (or whatever you have set for hotspot and deactivated layers). Is the layer switching at least?

 

"No problem - set your Interaction Method (in the Settings Manager) to Choose Interaction Then Hotspot. You'll have to make a new Menu to display the verbs. Define each Verb in the Cursor Manager, then display each verb in your Menu by creating a MenuInteraction element and selecting that verb."

thanks! but I'm not sure if a menu suffice... i'd love to have an interface with animations... the plan was to put planes/sprites in front of (close to) the camera (is this unwise? *performance ?) so is there a way to switch the current interaction mode on gameObjects? (in Visionaire there is simply a little action to control it)

 

Out of curiosity... will you be opening a dedicated forum for AC? Would be awesome to have a place to go with categories which will make searching support questions, viewing others projects and so on much more convenient. This is an incredible tool!

 

Hi adventurefan,

hey... thanks a lot. That nailed it and I got it working! Chris should add this to the docs

 

Thanks the troubleshooting with layers helped me figure what I was doing wrong. Just a mistake on my end! Send message on/off works fine on character hotspots.

 

In my storyboard I have a part where the character needs to crouch down under a window to avoid being noticed by the guard, inside AC is there a way to hit like the "C" key to have the player character crouch and move around then press the same key to return to a standing position? I was thinking of having triggers at window height and have the character sneak under them, I guess the collider for the character would have to scale as well.

Can this be done in the AC interface without a bunch of crazy coding?

Thanks

 

Hello again!

I was wondering where can I find this new "Hotspot: Change interaction". I have updated, but can't find it in action list.

Also, I'm experiencing some difficulties with Inventory Actionlists. I try to add a minor feature that, after player examines an object in his inventory the camera would switch. However, this nor "Continue with Cutscene" doesn't work. After examining the specific ActionList it says in the "linked cutscene" or at "target camera" Type Mismatch? Any ideas why this happens?

Thank you!

 

adventure creator can make a mini game like this ?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ntV7paoUI
some one try create mini game ?

 

Of course it could. Probably the main thing you'd need to worry about is your logic for completing it. What I'd do using the built-in actions is have a bunch of variable checks in a row where if one of the dials is in the right spot, you continue, otherwise you stop. At the end of that series of checks, I'd run my cutscene that provides feedback for completing the puzzle.

 

I'm about 10 scenes into development on a project with Adventure Creator now and continue to appreciate how flexible this system is. The menu system is extremely impressive.

I know someone mentioned the idea of dialogue trees a while back, and I have to admit I too have found myself battling the conversation-system on more complex and branched dialogue. But in lieu of something that detailed, would it be possible to at least provide a view (even in the action list editor) where there is sufficient room to see and enter multiple longer lines of dialogue without needing to arrow-key to the right?

In a broader sense, I think the main disconnect I'm having occurs when (by necessity) switching back and forth between interaction and conversation inspectors to piece together the flow of storytelling. I completely understand why it works this way - and the consistency in interactions is nice... but if there was some way to show and edit both in one view I think it would really ease the process.

One can always script everything out prior to even touching an engine, of course... but there's something really special about writing and seeing it back immediately, IMO.

Thanks again!

 

What if you want to change to a scene without any AC-Stuff? We might have a few scenes without the need of AC in our game. Would the "check previous scene" action also work in that case if I'm coming from a scene without AC?

Show all Hotspots:
Also we want to provide the player to show an Icon over each Hotspot when he's pressing a certain key/input. Is that already possible and if yes, how? If not, consider to add it to you mile long feature-request list

On the coding side... there's certainly a public list/array to get all hotspots in a scene?

 

Hi Chris,

Is it possible to have translations to hotspot name changes during game play?

The First name of the label is added to the language speech when gathering lines but the label you have for renamed does not show in the list.

example:

1st Hotspot Lable; My name is Joe

2nd Rename Hotspot from a trigger; Me Joe is name.


The first appears in the speech ID list for translation but the second does not.

If there was a way to ID the rename hotspot I can see it working. But there is no option for this that I know of. Is There?



Hope you understand my meaning here.

 

Nice question! Would love to know the answer to this also... the game I have in mind will be a hybrid of sorts, and I'll need to break up the adventure throughout.

Thx!

 

Hi everyone. I was wondering if:

1) Is it possible to make 2d game camera to be affected by ipad's Three-axis gyro the same way 3d camera is affected by mouse cursor in connection to parallax scrip? Some hint, help?
3) How to make sprites in the inventory bigger or what influences the size of the sprites?
4) Can I make inventory elements to be aligned horizontal and centered instead of horizontal left? Maybe I am missing something?

Thanks.

 

I've been looking into this, and basically it's not possible to change Actions from being derived from ScriptableObjects. However, that's exactly why Inventory ActionLists were created! They're ActionLists that exist outside of a scene, created with the intent of being used for Inventory interactions, however they can also be used for more general purposes.

I apologise that this isn't exactly how you wanted things, but the next update (coming this week) will provide a new Run ActionList action which, aside from letting you choose a scene-based Action to run, will also let you run an Inventory ActionList.

I'm not quite sure I follow, sorry. I have seen someone manage to make a visual "Interaction" menu that changes shape (like Full Throttle's, for example), but I don't know if this is what you're asking for.

Thank you. I'm open to suggestions and advice, but I admit I'm having a hard enough time keeping up with just the one as it is!

Not without tailoring the AC scripts for your own purpose, I'm afraid. If you're a coder, it shouldn't be too difficult - define two animation clips for "crouching idle" and "crouching walk" in the Player.cs script, a bool called "isCrouching", and amend the MoveUpdate and AnimUpdate accordingly.

If you can't find an Action, remember to update the list of them in the Actions Manager. As for the Inventory ActionList, you can't directly reference a scene object inside one, since it's inside an asset file. You can, however, call a scene object with the Engine: Send message Action, referencing an object's ConstantID number. To change the camera, for example, have a Cutscene in your scene that does just that, attach a ConstantID script and make a note of the ID number. Then enter that into the InvActionLists' Send message Action, and set the Message to send as Interact.

AC relies on the PersistentEngine prefab being present in a scene to know what scene it just came from. You could always try overwriting the variable in question manually - I believe it's in the SceneChanger script (apologies, I don't have AC in front of my right now).

There's something similar in place already via a Input key called ToggleHotspots. When you press it, all Hotspots flash on the screen.

No. In this case, I'd recommend you instead duplicate the Hotspot for each different name, and turn each off/on as you need them, rather than change the label. They can both share the same Interactions, so you won't need to duplicate anything else.

You should be able to "Turn AC off" by chaning the gameState variable (inside the PersistentEngine prefab's StateHandler component) to GameState.Cutscene, which will effectively stop any gameplay in AC until it's set back to GameState.Normal

I'm afraid not. Not having an iPad to develop on myself, I doubt this feature being made avaiable anytime soon either. You're welcome to try coding it yourself - all input is managed through the PlayerInput.cs script, so at least you only have one place to insert code into.

The inventory GUI is all handled in the Menu manager -look for the Menu labelled Inventory, and you'll be able to customise the look and layout of items in the way you'd like.

 

Chris, i'm having a prboblem with the Player's scale: the closer he moves to the camera, the bigger he becomes. What am i doing wrong?

 

Figured it out! Derp!

 

Actually...using ConstantIDs with Inventory ActionLists could be a workaround that could be built into every Action. Whenever you drag an object into a slot in the editor, it could look to see if the object had a ConstantID and store it. Then when it came time to grab the reference, if it was null, it could use the ConstantID to look it up. Do you think that'd work?

Sorry I'm afraid I don't know much about Inventory ActionLists since our game doesn't have an inventory. Let me know if there's some other way to use them generally.

 

Hey guys. I'm starting to get the hang of this. I had problems with hotspots, then I got them working. Now, all of a sudden, Nothing is happening when I run the game. It's almost like rays are not being cast to it. The cursor doesn't change when mousing over them, they don't highlight, can't click, etc. Anything I should automatically check for? Proper layers, etc?
Thanks in advance!

*Ok, I've got it half way working. Cursor will change, I can interact, but the label does not appear. In fact, it will appear at soon random point in the room when I mouse over the random area..

 

Agreed. I wish AC's conversation editor used a similar interface to Dialoguer or at least had cross-compatibility:


http://www.dialoguer.info/

 

Is it "ToggleHotspots" or "FlashHotspots" as it says in the settings Infofield under "required inputs"? I tried both (mapped to space) but nothing happened.

Edit: Additionally I can't get HotSpot highlighting to work - highlight scripts are in place, object to highlight is set, hotspots are on default layer - but nothing happens. Maybe thats the reason too, the Inputaxis for Flash/Toggle does not work?

 

Holy crap that's awesome! Thanks for alerting me to this. I wanted to take a node editor and combine it with AC at some point. The graphic design of this guy is way better, though; like a whole other level. And if you believe in the Bret Victor school of application development, most of a tool's utility is not in it's interaction, but in how it presents information.

Anyway, I'll dig through the Dialoguer code here and see if it's feasible to tie into AC somehow...

 

Hi chris,
I want to congratulate you for the tremendous work you are putting on this asset, it would be great for unity to recognize its power and offered you a good return to get int inside unity pipeline.

I also wanted to thank you for adding the imput and NPC follow options, they are of great value to my project and to the asset itself

And i would like to request , a small tutorial or a more advanced help (in the manual) on the input action, I.E - player name imput on game start

Thanks again

Great work

 

Like some other people here I'm also having trouble that in 2D mode the scaling of the player is too much. Backing down the cam and decreasing FOV dosen't really help at all like someone also has pointed out.

Would be an intermediate solution, to have a public var for a scale-ratio? For example if the ratio is 0, everything is like now. But if the value is greater 0, measure the distance from playerstart and scale the up when going to back and scale it down by that value when going to front.
But maybe thats to quirky.

 

Can you swap out the walk-sound on the fly (different sounds for different floors/terrains)? Maybe it would be great having an action... "Change walk sound"?
Or how can you swap out the Player-Prefab for a specific scene?

 

Something like that would be so good.

All it would have to include for me is

1: default camera selection options for any NPC in a scenario, so you aren't setting the camera switches constantly
2: flow environment that supports linking mutiple conversations (the way to branch in AC)
3: dialogue option responses as expected

Then the ability to export that directly to your project.

That would be really useful. Doesn't have to be full featured, it's just nice to get the 'story' in one place without distractions.

 

Me again Just noticed that AC fails to build for WindowsStore 8.1:
Assets\AdventureCreator\Scripts\Save system\Serializer.cs(22,36): error CS0234: Der Typ- oder Namespacename 'Formatters' ist im Namespace 'System.Runtime.Serialization' nicht vorhanden. (Fehlt ein Assemblyverweis?)

 

I'll reply to individual posts shortly, but in the meantime, 1.23 is out! With it comes true 2D workflow and .. Mecanim support! Changelog in the first post.

Mecanim support has long been a requested feature, but in truth I was holding out until Unity's code base allowed for the same level of control as it does with the Legacy system. With Legacy, AC is able to basically "take care" of everything animation-wise - you supply a clip and tell it when to play, and AC handles the rest, even garbage-collecting unused clips.

With Mecanim however, that's not possible, but what with the recent questions I've been getting about extending gameplay with custom elements (like crouching, minigames, etc), I decided to implement Mecanim as a way of making it easier to implement new gameplay. Essentially, it's up to the user to design their own animation system, and AC will take care of the simple tasks by telling it which parameters it can control. For example, you tell AC which parameter is the "speed" parameter that changes state from Idle to Walk/Run etc, and AC will change it automatically.

As such, I'd say this is a more "advanced" way of working, because it relies on the user to do more of the legwork so far as animation goes (the Animate Actions have also been upgraded for Mecanim, however). The implication, though, is that it's much easier to add custom gameplay.

For example, going back to the previously-discussed issue of adding a "crouch" mechanic: you'd build your FSM around an IsCrouching bool, which determines whether Idle_Stand or Idle_Crouch is playing (for example). Then in a custom script, you just tie this bool to an input key. The Variable: Set Action has also been upgraded to assign Mecanim parameters to Variables. So let's say our crouching character approaches a window - you can set up a Trigger that Sets (and in turn, Checks) a Bool Variable to determine if a guard has spotted him.

Sometimes you may also need to disable AC's systems while your custom gameplay runs - even if it's as simple and brief as momentarily disabling everything while the player fires a gun. Now it's easier than ever to do so - the StateHandler script now has two new functions: TurnOnAC and TurnOffAC, that let you do just that. The exact code needed to do this is listed at the end of the updated manual.

And finally, going back to "true" 2D support, here's a video:

 

Anybody willing to help me out, please?I'll draw something for you if you can help me get this sorted out..LOL... So, this tool is great, but I'm having some head banging moments with it. In trying to figure out what exactly it is that I'm doing wrong, I can't tell if what's happening is because of my own errors, or bugs.

My issue is,in my scene, hotspots are incredibly buggy and are usually broken or don't work at all.

Here's a list of what I think could be contributing factors.

So I just downloaded the newest update for Unity.
When setting up my First person player controller, I follow along the video tutorial exactly. Once I run the game, I can control the character with the keyboard, but I can't mouse look. So, I add the mouse look script from the FPS controller Unity asset. It now works, but I think this is causing my issue. Or, is it necessary?

When they overlap a mesh collider, they seem to break.

Here's a link to a scene I've built. Notice how the labels, if they appear, are in strange places. There is also a hotspot on the floor and around the cap that do not work. There are 4 hotspots in this scene, one on the error on the dresser and another on the wall candle to the right of the dresser.

Update:It really seems to be something with my player setup. Going to keep looking at this...

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82647495/CoSH/CoSHv2.html

Thanks.

 

Thanks again for everything Chris!
The first and perhaps best purchase of the entire Asset Store: D

 

Wow Chris... thanks for the update. You rock

 

You mean his actual scale is increasing? What are your perspective settings and animation engine?

I've thought about something along those lines. Technically, you can now manipulate any scene objects already - just call up a Cutscene and have it do the "local" work for you, but I see the advantage of this. Will investigate..

Let's try to sort these one at a time. What's your Settings Manager look like? You don't need an additional FPS controller - mouse-looking is already built in.

Apologies - I meant FlashHotspots. Have you defined this in Unity's Input manager correctly?

I appreciate people's desire for a better dialogue editor, but since speech lines are embedded in Actions I don't think it's actually possible in the way people would like. Please do dig into the code, though, I'll gladly be proven wrong.

You need to create a new Menu with an "Input" element type. Set the Menu to appear manually, then use an Action to display it. Have a button on the Menu that makes it disappear, and then you can use the Variable: Set Action to assign the contents of the Input element (the "Player name" box) to a String Variable.

The 1.23 release (just out) will help you with this.

Thanks for the alert. It seems to be related to Binary saving. If you need a quick hack, open up SaveSystem.cs, find GetSaveMethod () and return only XML. You should then be free to remove any code that it doesn't like.

 

Chris, Thanks for the reply. Going to update, create a few more new players from scratch and do a bit more troubleshooting before I go asking for more of your time.

 

"New 2D "Moving and turning" mode: Top Down - use to work entirely in 2D" -- Hooray! Hooray! You made my day

 

Chris... wow!

Thanks for adding those features to AC, I'm now thinking of so much more I can do with my Character animations and my story, you have truly opened my mind on this last update!!

By far the best purchase I've made.

MAN I wish I was in the UK I'd buy you a pint or two!!!

 

Ok. I create a completely new scene. Organize room objects. Create a simple plane. use all setting managers from the demo_scenemanager.
use tin pot for my player. move my start point. set controls for First Person and keyboard and mouse. I have left control setup to ToggleCursor. Run game.
I can see the cursor, the mouse moves it around fine. Press left control. cursor centers in screen, I can no longer move the mouse and can't mouse look... Can't look around. w,a,s,d work fine to move tin pot. I cannot figure out what I'm doing wrong. ugghhh

 

Holy mackerel. That's REALLY helpful because I actually started using mecanim stuff and wrapping it all in Playmaker on my own. Worth it though as now I understand Playmaker and it's quite the fun game making tool in itself. But having native support in AC is going to be a win for my project.

 

Well I took a look at Dialoguer. It might be able to be torn apart and combined with AC somehow. But I was thinking that if I did that, I couldn't share it with anyone. Plus that poor developer has already had a lot of trouble surrounding the IP of that plugin, I hate to even ask him for some kind of license.

...so I stayed up all night and just started making a visual editor from scratch. I got as far as having 4 types of logic nodes, and purely visually connecting them, and then also creating them based on objects of that type that exist in the scene. I also added buttons at the top that basically do the same thing as the AC window, but with the extra steps of preparing the object for the visual editor.



For now, it requires an extra Node Monobehaviour script attached to every object that's represented.

My intention is first to just visualize the organization of Cutscenes, Hotspots, Interactions, and Triggers. That's what I'm most interested in. Then after that, roll the Action List Editor into this so nodes can be edited. Then add a couple other objects.