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

WOW my head jst exploded!!!

This is just too cool!

 

One important tip for anyone using mecanim: if you use layers, make sure you set the weight for each layer to 1 in the animator window.

Mecanim has new layers off by default which can be confusing because then your animation won't actually be used even when your bool is turned on.

 

Latest update is fantastic. Thanks again for looking into the new 2D workflow... seems to really be intuitive!

Also really nice to see Mechanim support, but I had a question about implementation. I'm getting the nicest results using simple setups (had some issues trying one of Unity's new Blendtrees) and checking both "Apply Root Motion" and "Rely on Root Motion."

If I don't use root motion (I have a run animation that is in-place, for instance) I have issues with the character sliding around a bit when starting and stopping motion - but mostly when stopping. In order to prevent it I seem to have to increase the acc/deceleration to a decently high value that I'm not able to get a nice motion ramp.

So, I guess my question is... am I doing something stupid? Would it be possible to separate the acceleration and deceleration into separate variables?

Finally, with the legacy animation system you have nice turning animation slots... will the be possible to do with mechanim at some point?

 

Wow... great job, godatplay. Looking forward to seeing where this goes!

 

Possible scale bug with new sortingmap when loading new scene?
I think there's a little bug in the new player-scale sortingmap. If you change scene the new sorting map, or at least the connected scale settings, from the newly loaded scene are overruled by the scale settings from the screen you're coming from.

Example:
Scene 1 - Scale settings: 120%
Scene 2 - Scale settings: 70%
each one will play fine if the scene is tested directly
But if you start with scene 1 and the game loads scene2, the player scale from scene2 is being overriden by that from scene1... meaning in above example, scene2 scaling is now also at 120%.

Worth noticing, that I set up both sorting maps in both scenes without an area and just one single scale setting (I wanted no depth scaling when walking around, just an initial scale to match the artworks and scenery)


Highlighting on PC standalone:
Highlighting works on iOS, but not PC standalone (not on click and also not on the input axis). Just tested on several devices and can confirm that. Not looked into Mac and linux standalone but will do so.

Edit: Mac shows also no highlighting, as the webplayer does too. Tried it also with the demo

 

Great work on the latest update, Chris – the new 2D workflow solved all previous issues and is much easier to work with. Thanks heaps!

I tried out the NPC follow recently, too, and noticed the character sort order doesn't change as you walk above or below the NPC, so it's possible to have the main character appear to stand ontop of the NPC – is there currently a solution to this problem or would it require a sorting script be applied to the character(s)?

 

Hey Chris, great job on the newest update. I ran into a roadblock with it, though. I noticed you took out IsRunning() from ActionList and moved it to RuntimeActionList. I was using IsRunning to check on the status of Cutscenes so that I could pause them on demand. What should I do instead now?

Obviously I could add it back or set nextActionNumber to public, but it seems you have something specific in mind for managing this kind of thing, and so I'd prefer to use the intended way if possible.

 

The Inventory is not behaving correctly if you show it with inputKey. If you add for example "i" to show the inventory, you cant drag&drop the items - oddly only if there's by chance a hotspot behind the inventory.

If the inventory is set to "during gameplay" everything is fine.

 

Chris you can create a tutorial about action Third-party : playmaker ?
I think have so many people don't know about this!

 

Thanks! Mine's always a Guiness

Very cool to see you making progress. Window editing is not my forté, I'll leave you to it!

No, you're right - acceleration and deceleration should be separate variables, I'll see to it.

Probably. Perhaps if you assign another float parameter as "turning" for AC to modify. Admittedly I'm not very well versed in using Mecanim - would this be the way to do it?

Thanks for explaining this - I thought I'd prevented that from happening. Will investigate..

Sorry, I'm being slow, here. Do you mean highlighting in general doesn't work? (i.e. when mouse-overing Hotspots?) Or just when you call FlashHotspots? Does this not even work in the 3D Demo game for you? I'm using a Mac, so it should work on that at least.

Glad to hear it. You'll need to have a SortingMap defined in your scene - see last couple of tutorial videos. Then just add the FollowSortingMap script to any Characters in the scene.

I added a new component to the GameEngine prefab called ActionListManager. ActionLists are now started and stopped through it from now on - it's job is to keep track of multiple lists at once (so that when one ends, it can work out whether or not to end the Cutscene state). Use the functions in that to determine if an ActionList is running or not.

Sorry, do you mean it only breaks if there's a Hotspot behind the Inventory, or that it breaks unless there's a Hotspot behind the Inventory? Also, please give a screenshot of your Settings Manager.

Good shout. I'll post here when it's done.

 

And for clarity: the RuntimeActionList is how Inventory ActionLists (or asset-file based Lists) are run. The individual actions get copied from the asset into the scene component and run from there.

 

It seems the usual in mecanim is to use a 'Direction' parameter. One condition they use is "Direction = greater than 30" on the transition from the main moving states into a turn state. Then there's also direction thresholds used to configure the turn.

You can see this all prepared in the demo locomotion animator of these assets: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/5328

If AC could just use that info when turning a mecanim character it might be good to go?

 

I just saw the news about the update. Congats

Quick question the New 2D systems doesn"t have to be Top Down does it? I prefer to work with Y being my up axis.

 

Tutorial about Menus would be really helpful

 

I do think a direction param for turning is likely all that would be needed for adding turning to your Mechanim support.

I'm also not the biggest Mechanim expert, but it does look like Blendtrees are being used more and more in example assets. I tried them and they mostly worked, but I had the issues with sliding - and the biggest issue was that I couldn't get them (even with a simple 1D blendtree) to start or stop non-abruptly. It seemed odd since testing the blendtree in the Animator really looked nice when transitioning from walk->run->walk->idle, etc. Wondering if there's a bug (in my brain, or in code)...

If you have a moment, it might be worth looking at the beta of the new assets Unity is going to include soon: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/14474

My first go at this was using their new stock thirdperson animator controller (with blendtrees that basically use "Forward" and "Turn" as floats). Then I tried simplifying it to a 1D blendtree, and finally gave up and just recreated a simple 3 state animator, which was the only way I got things playing nicely (except for a little slip-sliding on stop).

A couple other things that might be useful for Mechanim:

1. Adjustable accel or decel curves for the float values sent to mechanim. The accel/decel is used to compute the Mechanim float value, right?

2. The ability to change the scale of your speed values from the current to a -1 to 1 value. Not that big of a deal, since we can always adjust these on the Mechanim side as well... but I had to guess a bit at the scale of your values to get the Mech speeds about right.

It's funny... I really appreciate the "simplicity" of the previous animation system (especially with this genre of game where you're not necessarily doing acrobatic animations), but having all the available re-targetable animation with Mechanim is such a killer feature.

 

Cool, thanks Chris, IsListRunning() is exactly what I'm looking for. Appreciate it

 

Game Camera script is still missing a Follow Y position Option.

 

Hi Chris, great work indeed. I wonder if you're planning add new tutorials? I'm not sure if each realease has the tutorial file updated with all this new information...
There's a lot of fantastic material in the forum but it started to be a little bit complex to keep track of all this stuff...
sorry for the stupid question!

Best regards,
P.

 

Hello! To Chris/Le_Foosh/anyone - in a 3D project, is there a way to change the player model and default animations? Per scene would be fine. Thanks!

 

It looks like I can't reference scene objects in Menu Action Lists. I mean it'll let me, but when I press play it will go back to 'none' and will say "Type mismatch" on the specific action.

For example, I'll have a Play Sound action and in the Sound Object section I would choose the appropriate object in my scene and when I press play it will revert back to 'none'.

 

Hi Chris, I think there might be an issue with camera player follow in the new top-down mode. I started a new top-down scene and created a 2d game camera which was set to follow the player without horizontal constraints, and made sure it was assigned to the player start object. All cameras were set up the same as in the demo scene. When the character moved along the scene, the camera would move rapidly past the character and continue on without slowing.

The same issue occurred in the demo scene after I disabled the horizontal constraint on the NavCam and extended the background elements and navmesh out as a test. The closer the player was to the camera's starting position the more accurate the player follow would be; however, as the character moved across the elongated scene the camera would move further and further ahead of the player character.

The camera followed the player just fine when I rotated everything 90 degrees (to zero the X rotation) and enabled screen-space moving and turning.

If you could look into this or point out a fix it would be greatly appreciated

 

It would be great to understand everything a little better.

 

Hi, this tool is awesome and a big thank you for making it! The new top down approach seems like a very good workflow for my 2d game. But currently the pathfinding doesn't work too well. In the new 2D demo for example, Brain walks right through the tree if he stands in the left most part of the screen and tries to move behind the bench/tree.

Also, I'm having trouble with the speed of my subtitles. Ideally I'd like my cutscenes to show subtitles in "speech speed" (display time factor 0.1) . But during conversations I'd like the option to make subtitles show until the user clicks to continue to the next subtitle. Is there a way to accomplish this?

 

mhhh, has anybody updated yet? when i create a new clean project, import the new AC (successfully - everything seems normal...) but i when i switch to the "settings" tab, the console goes wild and the AC window freezes.... the old one seemed to work fine, so i've no idea what i could be doing wrong here?

SerializationException: Field "quality" not found in class OptionsData
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.ReadTypeMetadata (System.IO.BinaryReader reader, Boolean isRuntimeObject, Boolean hasTypeInfo) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/ObjectReader.cs:691)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.ReadObjectInstance (System.IO.BinaryReader reader, Boolean isRuntimeObject, Boolean hasTypeInfo, System.Int64 objectId, System.Object value, System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo info) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/ObjectReader.cs:269)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.ReadObject (BinaryElement element, System.IO.BinaryReader reader, System.Int64 objectId, System.Object value, System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo info) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/ObjectReader.cs:195)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.ReadObject (BinaryElement element, System.IO.BinaryReader reader, System.Int64 objectId, System.Object value, System.Runtime.Serialization.SerializationInfo info) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/ObjectReader.cs:223)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.ReadNextObject (BinaryElement element, System.IO.BinaryReader reader) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/ObjectReader.cs:130)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.ObjectReader.ReadObjectGraph (BinaryElement elem, System.IO.BinaryReader reader, Boolean readHeaders, System.Object result, System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.Header[] headers) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/ObjectReader.cs:104)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.NoCheckDeserialize (System.IO.Stream serializationStream, System.Runtime.Remoting.Messaging.HeaderHandler handler) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/BinaryFormatter.cs:179)
System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary.BinaryFormatter.Deserialize (System.IO.Stream serializationStream) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary/BinaryFormatter.cs:136)
Serializer.DeserializeObjectBinary[OptionsData] (System.String pString) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/Save system/Serializer.cs:94)
SettingsManager.ShowGUI () (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/Managers/SettingsManager.cs:197)
AdventureCreator.OnGUI () (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/Managers/Editor/AdventureCreator.cs:137)
System.Reflection.MonoMethod.Invoke (System.Object obj, BindingFlags invokeAttr, System.Reflection.Binder binder, System.Object[] parameters, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/monoAndRuntimeClassLibs/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Reflection/MonoMethod.cs:222)

 

mhhh seems like the old AC asset isn't working anymore aswell, so i guess the update somehow corruped my unity.... i'll probably have to reinstall and check again..

 

I encountered this in the demo scene, too, but it's easily fixed by going to the Navigation window, clearing the old navmesh and baking a new one. This will prevent the character from walking through the tree or bench.

 

Thanks Tanngnost! I thought it wasn't possible to bake since I couldn't bake the original mesh. And in my own project I had simply forgotten to lower the radius and height values. But now I'm back on track and have switched to the new workflow!

 

Wondering why I am getting this error from Char.cs script:

Code (csharp):

1. MissingComponentException: There is no 'Rigidbody' attached to the "MyMe 2D" game object, but a script is trying to access it.

I am using Unity's 2D Rigidbody, But even when I set Adventure creator to 2D or 2.5 D it refuses it.

 

If i'm not mistaken, you should use 'Rigibody' script instead of '2D Rigibody'

 

Thanks Bramlet, was just reading that in the docs.

I added jumping into my app and not thrilled with Unity's 3D physics. So I guess I will look into how much effort it will take to add 2D support to Adventure Creator.

 

No, but it is the default now. Just set your "Moving and turning" variable back to either World Space or Screen Space and you'll go back to working the previous way.

Will see to it.

I will try to add some new tutorials soon, though lately my time has been taken up implementing much-needed features. However, the manual is always up to date with each release.

Hi JohnArr, you can change the Player prefab inside the Settings Manager.

Referencing scene objects from Inventory / Menu ActionLists is a planned feature. In the meantime, you have to make do with a Menu Actionlist referencing a scene-based Cutscene (by way of the Object: Send message Action) that handles the actual scene-based Actions.

No, there isn't. Do one type of these speech lines have audio files, and the other not?

This looks like a conflict with another asset in your project folder. What else do you have present?

 

Hi!

With all the different updates, question and all its a bit confusing to find answers within one post.
I would vote for a separate forum, which would make reading and finding posts/solutions much easier.
What do you think.

 

Yeah I mentioned earlier and I'm definetly in favor of this. Hanging it off the main site shouldn't be too difficult, I've used some pretty simple and robust forums in the past. If you're worried about moderation I'm sure a trusted user here can help? Would be very cool to have.

 

Very cool!

I would like to see everyone's work here too, could post guys?

My project at the moment, is in pre-production, still riding the history and setting a few things, soon I'll post something about the development, in the meantime, I hope the new dialogue system too

 

I started this about 6 days ago. I released a first person mobile title back in August. It's a slide show type game. Now, I'm re-creating it in Unity. This is the perfect tool for me and has saved me TONS of work. Here's a web player build of the most current state. I've really been spending most of my time learning AC and setting up the atmosphere.
Cheers!
Press "C" to toggle mouselook/cursor mode.

http://www.hiddentreasuregames.com/coshv3.html

 

Quite a few bugs have surfaced this week, so I will be uploading a 1.24 "bugfix special" update shortly.

I'm honestly very humbled that there's an interest in a dedicated forum, and it's something I'm going to have to think seriously about. There is a concern that managing/replying to a whole forum (even if other moderators were involved) might be too much for me to handle, so rather than make a decision now I'm going to see how things go over the next few weeks, so far as "development intensity" goes, and consider it properly then. In the meantime, I'd be very interested to see what people are managing to make with Adventure Creator, so if anyone wants to share their work - please do!

EDIT: Sorry artfish, you replied while I was writing. Thanks, I'm glad AC was a good tool for you to use!

 

Hey Chris... good work with the new Top-down 2D

That's the way I do it... from now on I dont have to change the sprite orientations with the updates hehe

Although I do a few things different...

- The 2D parallax I do it by having different cameras (that only see a layer) and a 2DTK parallax script

- I set the order map manually (I have a "change ZDepth" action triggered by AC_triggers or actionlist)... It's not ideal. But it lets me change the zdepth as I like. It works more or less like the camera swaping from the 2.5D tutorial. There is no automatic character zdepth change like yours.

- For sprite scaling I have another triggered action. At first it was an AC_trigger, but the "continuous" check made it so slow when executing that I changed it to a normal script with OnColliderStay code. It accepts the values of character scale at the bottom and top of the box collider, like your sorting maps, but with only two points. When a character enters the colliders It scales and changes velocity ramping from the values of the bottom and top.

- I also added another sprite scaling zone, like before... but in this case I interpolate from a scale value on the left border to another for the right border of the collider... making an horizontal scaling (when going deeper is just going to the right/left).

So I have scaling and ordering as different values (it has its pros and cons)

I think your system cover almost everything I did except (note that I didn't try yours yet, I speak only by seeing the new tutorials):

- Being able to set your actual order, fix it or release it with an action (to be used on entering/exiting trigger zones). If fixed the normal ordermap should be ignored. (I think you could simulate something like this if your actual system lets you change from an ordermap to another with an action).

- Being able to set your scale ramp horizontally

- Being able to have my characters affected by scaling, and ordering separately.

- Ordering, scale and character direction should be able to be fixed or released for any character. So I can overwrite the normal behaviour if needed. If not, maybe It's enough being able to change ordermaps on runtime with an action.

Let me show how I use this actions and trigger zones on MI3's puerto pollo scene (I use it as a complex real world test scene) :

For the first screen... clicking on "Muelle" hotspot our characters walks down the docks, and clicking "Subir" it goes back. This is done executing an actionlist.



On the walk to the docks actionlist: The character walks to the marker, then changes zdepth behind the stairs and walks down... when it enter the "Escala_0.5" trigger it changes the character scale to 0.5 units and teleports to the docks entrance.

The fixed direction actions works for my character looking "U" although it's walking on another direction (this time D). So she can walks down the stairs showing her back (like she should). While fixed, the characters always shows that direction although she is walking looking to another one. The second fixed direction action lets me release the direction to mark the character to act normally.

There is another action similar to going up.



And finally, a complex scale and change depth zone... "Escala_2.25_1" trigger zone (near the left door) is a vertical scale ramp from 2.25 (my test-character 100% scale) units to 1 unit (near the bridge). There is another trigger there, "PlanoToZ_3" where I manually set the zdepth to 3 for walking behind the post.

For the bridge, there is "EscalaX_1_0.2" for an horizontal scale zone effect... so when walking to the right our characters resizes down to 0.2 units.

At the lower right you can see I change the depths between Z=3 to Z=7 on different triggers, so I can walk behind the columns, and the stairs door, or being in front of them.



I hope my workflow helps you with some ideas of how to improve your scale and ordermaps settings

 

any one help me connect AC with playmaker ?

 

It's easy-peasy: enter 'PlayMakerIsPresent' into the 'scripting define symbols' text box, located in Edit --> Project Settings --> Player

 

Hi Maas, your game looks pretty good.
I know you're using a perspective 3D camera with TK2DOrthographicCamera script, and doing the parallax with a camera per layer. Am I Right?
Now with the TopDown approach and parallax that Chris made in the last update, is it possible to change every camera to orthographic and put the TK2D Script on them?
I'm trying to do that but for some reason is not working fine, and I don't know if I configured wrong the properties or is not compatible at all.
I want exactly what Chris provides with the top down approach, but with multiresolution. Is it possible? Do you know how?
Thanks a lot!

 

I need to debug the values of my variables at runtime. Where can I find those? I know they get copied somewhere, but how do I know if one is getting set properly?

EDIT: I see there's a localVars list on the Variables Manager. Is there a reason that's hidden? Maybe you could just make it not hidden.

 

My debugging adventure continues Now I need to figure out which Action of an ActionList (in this case, a Cutscene) is being run at a given time. Is there a way to see that at runtime in the editor?

 

THank i did it

 

It does, indeed. Impressive work, and thanks for the in-depth explanation. I will have a think about how some of this might be adapted/integrated into the official release.

The only camera actually rendering in a scene is the MainCamera prefab - so if you want to modify anything, do it to that one. The MainCamera simpy copies the Camera and Transform data of any GameCamera it's "attached" to, so I'm not sure a TK2D camera will copy a regular Unity camera exactly.

The currently-running Action is given as an integer inside the ActionList - I believe it's called nextNumber (apologies - I don't have it in front of me right now). The ActionListManager's IsListRunning function checks to see if this integer >= 0. EDIT: It's nextActionNumber

 

And the 1.24 update is out. 1.25 will be more feature-focused, but this addresses a fair few bugs:

• Added: Turn float parameter to Mecanim-based Characters - outputs -1 and +1 when turning left and right respectively
• Added: Deceleration property to Character Movement settings - set to zero to use acceleration instead
• Added: New Menu transition option: Zoom
• Added: Ability to influence GameCamera's Y-position with target
• Added: RememberCollider script - use to save "enabled" state of Colliders
• Fixed: Saved camera data not being returned when loading a game in a different scene
• Fixed: GameCamera2D not following targets correctly
• Fixed: Player not obeying rules of the new SortingMap after changing scene
• Fixed: Interaction issues with Menus of Appear type On Input Key
• Fixed: Dialogue: Play speech Action now uses a TextArea for the "Line text" box
• Fixed: Missing "Required inputs" in Settings Manager when making a First Person game
• Fixed: Action labels in ActionListEditor window obscuring Action number if too long
• Fixed: Jerky movement from Player if moving to a Hotspot Marker that he's already standing over
• Fixed: Right-clicking on inventory items not deselecting current item if one was selected
• Fixed: Incorrect inventory items being selected when inventory menu is offset
• Fixed: Issues with copy/pasting Asset-based ActionLists
• Fixed: Error using GameCamer2.5D's "Set as active" button when game is not running

Also, new tutorial! Calling PlayMaker events:

 

Oo, exciting! Can you elaborate on these two a bit? I think I've had some trouble with the first, but I'd like more info just to be sure it's the same issue. Also when you say Asset-based, do you mean like Inventory ActionLists?

 

Thanks, so the most recent action is the first in the list, then it gets removed after being completed?

Feature request: Can you add code to remove the (Clone) text from the name of an Action when it's created? I notice when I copy/paste Actions that the text builds up in a name, which makes it hard to read.

 

Don't know if this is a Playmaker or AC question, but is it possible to set AC's variables in Playmaker or vice versa? That would make integration incredibly flexible and awesome.

 

Chris, besides the remodeling of speech system already discussed, I also like to see something that would allow animation and effects both in-game hud and in the options of menus, it would be possible something like this video: [video=youtube_share;2a-uzeIkaHM]http://youtu.be/2a-uzeIkaHM?t=36s??

Thanks again, Chris!

And Nice job, Maas!

 

Well... that's not my game hehe it's just a scene I used to test what AC was apable of, and establish a workflow for the real one... and this background from Monkey Island 3 (Puerto Pollo!) is one of the widest and perspective strange background from an adventure game I could remember hehe (and it's beautiful!!)... If I can do this one, I can do any scene

Now... On cameras...

I use the 3D camera from AC like if it were a 2D cam.... this is my setup:



MainCamera - Normal AC MainCamera. It needs the 2DTK parallax scripts (found on 2DTK forum)
_CamBackground - Background parallax cam. Configured culling Mask to a parallax layer
_CamMiddle - Middle parallax cam.Configured culling Mask to the other parallax layer
GameCamera - Front parallax cam and the Camera On Start loaded from player start.

All the cameras have the 2DTKcamera script, although it's only needed on MainCamera. But It helps seeing the rest of the cameras for positioning reasons.

MainCamera scripts... 2DTK configured with overrides, 2DTK parallax script and culling Mask for all the layers except the parallax ones.



On GameCamera... the 3D Game Camera Script from AC with a scroll and left/right limits configured:



And that's it...