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

Some update woes for me too.

I had configured an interaction button to auto-display when a hotspot is highlighted (none of the default interactions work well with mobile in my opinion). After the update, this button no longer triggers interactions in my project. If I select a hotspot and select the interaction that still works but, as I said, this isn't good for mobile. I found the default mobile controls difficult to use so I wrote my own with dragging to move and look around. This is why I can't use context sensitive interactions, when I try to move it just uses the active hotspot's interaction.

I've noticed whenever I update this plug-in kills my managers (have to reset them), tags, and other project settings. I'm hoping the author will stop providing project settings so he doesn't break my project every time there is an update.

 

Very Cool Project.

A few Questions:
1. How is the performance on Mobile (IOS, Android) ?
2. Does this work on Flash ?
3. Is there a Run-Time API ?

Cheers.

 

Question for anyone regarding Unity navmesh navigation and stairs. I'm using point and click and have a model staircase that has a proper mesh collider (the stairs are at an incline and navmesh is generated at an angled ramp that goes up the stairs). I'm still having issues with the player actually getting up on the stairs and walking along the incline. Do I need to make a navmesh segment for each stair and do both the footfall landing and the front facing portion of each stair in order for this to work correctly? Is there anything on the player object that I should add to work with inclines better? Thanks!

Edit - I have been able to at least generate navmesh that the player can *sometimes* get up...but it's not reliable and it seems as though physics plays a pretty significant role. When I actually can get the player to get up the stairs (after clicking around in various locations until the system seems to find a raytrace that it likes), the player can start to slide down the stairs pretty easily. Likewise, if I finally get to the top of the staircase, and decide to go back down the stair case, the player will start sliding and go down at roughly 1,000,000 MPH.

Wondering if maybe my staircase is simply too steep? Should I not create navmesh that's a simple "ramp" that goes up the incline of the stairs?

 

Hope you had a great Xmas and some time to rest, you surely deverve it

Please allow me some questions/requests

1- Does the current system allows for information to be stored in data base file (like excell)

e.g, if we use adventure creator to make a interactive survey, how could we store choices that players make, so it would be readable in a 3th party software

2- Does the current system allows for an NPC to follow the player?
Is there a inbuild action that could mimic this, if not do you consider creating one in the future?

3- Does the current system allows for NPC head to follow character (without pre-animated)
e.g-locomotion head follow
If not Do you consider something like this in the future?

4- in the game camera script the "target object to control camera movement" is connected to the Z axis

If Z is locked we cannot change target, for example if we wish to make camera follow a NPC in the X and Y axis
Could this be changed?

Regards

 

Hello,

I recently bought and started using Adventure Creator and had been following the tutorial videos on YouTube - everything has been fine up until I tried to setup a Trigger to switch cameras and noticed that my ActionsManager does not work correctly. It doesn't show any actions available. Below is the error that appears in the console.

please help! thanks!!
-Andrew



NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
ActionListEditor.DrawSharedElements () (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListEditor.cs:67)


AC_TriggerEditor.OnInspectorGUI () (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/Logic/Editor/AC_TriggerEditor.cs:22)
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditors (Boolean isRepaintEvent, UnityEditor.Editor[] editors, Boolean eyeDropperDirty) (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:850)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

 

Hello,

Can one work with the 2D tools Unity 4.3 has, or is 2DTK still required? If so, will you be adding support for "Unity 2D" in the future?

Regards,
David.

 

Happy new year for all! And Yes, the creator already added support for Unity 2D tools too.

 

Hey lads!

I just can't realize how to use NavMeshSegments in 2D, because NavMesh requires z-axis, which is quite useless in 2d projects.

 

Hello everyone, back at last. Thank you for your patience!

There's no restrictions on how many Dialogue Options can be in a Conversation. I've tested using the Dialogue: Toggle option Action on a Converation with 18 options and it works just fine for me.

Please forgive my inexperience with namespaces and compatibility with other plugins. The latest version of AC puts a namespace on classes with the most generic names (e.g. Action, Char). Does this not solve the issue? So long as it doesn't break games in-development (e.g. renaming classes) I'm willing to make changes to the scripts, but I'd appreciate some guidance on what it is exactly you'd want things to be like.

Dialogue can be displayed either all-at-once, or using a type-writer effect (as with the demo, when subtitles are enabled). The display time can be adjusted, and the GUI can be customised. XML files are used to import translations only.

How frustrating! I did a lot of testing to try to make sure this didn't happen, so I'm sorry it did. I'm not actually quite sure why it would have, to be honest. If it does again, be sure not to save the scene - the data ought to be recoverable. Open a blank scene and check that the managers are all running correctly, and then re-load the scene.

This is only an issue so far as development goes. In a webplayer or standalone executable, this does not happen.

Actually, I'm not sure how Unity uploads the project settings to the asset when I update it, it's not inside the Adventure Creator folder. As for your interaction problem, I'm afraid I'm not quite sure what your problem/configuration is. Could please elaborate?

1. Performance obviously depends on the device and game in question, but it's certainly compatible with both iOS and Android.
2. I haven't tried it myself, but I can't see any restrictions specific to AC.
3. Sorry, I don't understand the question.

Have a look at your player's capsule collider. It may be that your staircase is indeed to steep - if there is not enough of a horizontal "footing" on each step, then the player will not be able to rest on it. You will want your NavMesh to be an incline (rather than sticking to the stair mesh), but your collision for the player to follow the stair mesh.

Failing that, you may want to have your player use the staircase in a cutscene, but I hope that you don't need to resort to that.

Yes. The state of global variables are stored in saved games. Non-iOS games save this data in Binary format, but you can change the format to XML by a simple edit of the GetSaveMethod function in the SaveSystem.cs script.

No to both, at the moment, as neither have been requested until now. However, I will consider adding these.

A camera's target is used for it's X and Z position, and Y rotation. So long as one of these variables are unlocked, the Target object can be changed. Am I misunderstanding?

I've replied to this in the email you've sent.

For 2D projects, you must use the Z-axis for depth, rather than the Y-axis - similar to Unity's own 2D view in the Scene window. A 2D Demo that demonstrates the workflow for 2D games is in development.

 

"1. How is the performance on Mobile (IOS, Android) ?
2. Does this work on Flash ?
3. Is there a Run-Time API ?
1. Performance obviously depends on the device and game in question, but it's certainly compatible with both iOS and Android.
2. I haven't tried it myself, but I can't see any restrictions specific to AC.
3. Sorry, I don't understand the question."

What I meant to say is: The package is designed as in-editor game creator, is it possible to design the game using coding instead of using the editor. Essentially, can the functionality that is exposed to the editor also work via coding at run-time?

 

I actually ended up rebuilding the staircase in ProBuilder. I liked the look of the model, but it was pretty clear that it was originally designed for an FPS, so I decided to just make a prefab that works for Adventure Creator and with my player character. Now I just need to figure out how to set the player up with IK so it doesn't look like he's doing a sweet dance while walking up and down the stairs.

Thanks Chris!

 

Partially - it depends on which functionality in particular you're dealing with. The Managers are asset files, which aren't loaded into the scene hierarchy but rather referenced from the Resources folder. The Managers contain mainly settings variables, but the game logic itself is stored in engine scripts inside the scene hierarchy. As an example: the inventory items that can be picked up would not be modifiable via run-time code, but the player's actual inventory at any one time could be.

 

Thanks for your reply Chris. I don't blame you for this issue, it is mostly due to a lack of foresight by Unity. They should have supported namespaces at the same time as the Asset Store launch and should include it in documentation for creating plugins for the store.

I actually ended up wrapping every single file in a namespace and that fixed my problems. I guess I haven't tested it yet in terms of functionality - I'll be testing it seriously in the coming weeks - but I can use the rest of my project without any conflicts, so I'm assuming it would work otherwise.

I agree, at least the more generic names should be wrapped in a namespace, especially Action since it's a core Mono thing, but also some of the other ones like the classes in Character, Controls, and Logic such as Button, Char, Player, Interaction, Sound, Menu, Options, etc.

Thanks for taking care of it already, I appreciate it

 

Hi All,

Loving the plug in, currently porting my game over from Visionaire to Unity and this is saving me a TONNE in dev costs!

One question, none of my text displays in game - tooltips/labels or dialoguelay speech options - can anyone tell me why this might be happening?

Any help would be very much appreciated!

Thanks,

Kris

 

Any idea on the when you will release the New Tutorials for the 2D tools you have added?

 

Have you got a Menu Manager loaded? You can just make use of the Demo_MenuManager asset until you want to make your own, but one needs to be present for text to display.

Not until I've finished actually making the 2D Tools! It will be well worth the wait, here are some of the upcoming 2D workflow improvements:

• Sorting Map - Use to change the sorting order (or layer) of Characters according to their distance from the Camera. This way, you can have all of set sprites objects on the same plane, and still have the Player move "behind" them when at the correct depth.
• Scene-space moving and turning - When looking at objects or moving to Markers, Characters can rely on their position on the screen (rather than their actual 3D position). This way, all of your Hotspots and Markers can also be at the same depth as your set sprites.

Essentially, this allows you to work more or less entirely in Unity's "2D" mode in the Scene Window. Setting up a NavMesh in 3D space will still be the case, but once that's done you can go back to 2D mode and build your game from one perspective. The upcoming 2D Demo game will explain this better than I can by writing, here's a sneak preview:

 

Wow!! I really Like the Preview! I've Emailed you an image of the project I'm working on before, and these changes are Perfect for it!! Any Guesses on Time frame on this?

 

hi I have a couple of questions before I take the plunge and buy this asset firstly the asset looks amazing

1) Does the asset allow for touch screen controls, I notice you use a on click method in your demo
2) I want to use NGUI to control my character via joysticks / buttons on screen (using iPhone) will this cause problems?
3) do you have a quest management system?
4) do you have to use the camera system attached to the robot or can I just use my own? if so will this cause any issues?

Thank You

 

Hello!

I have a question regarding cameras:

The game I am making uses a static camera that can be panned around an area. Areas contain several objects that when interacted with sends the camera towards the object for closer inspection. When the inspection is complete the camera zooms back to the default position.

I am currently using the Main Camera as my default camera as the mouselook script gives me exactly what I want in terms of control. My issue is that I cannot swap cameras via interactions as the Interaction controls seem to only swap between Game Cameras. Since the mouselook script seems to be incompatible with Game Cameras I can't use a Game Camera as my default camera (unless there is a workaround I don't know about).

Gameplay flow is as follows:

Player moves mouse around the area and cursor changes to show interactive objects - player clicks on object and camera zooms in for closer look - player clicks off of object and camera zooms back to default position.

Any and all help is appreciated!

 

The GameCameras are merely used as target locations and settings for the MainCamera. What you'll do is create a GameCamera in the zoomed in position and set that as the camera target in your interaction. In game, your MainCamera will move to the position of the zoomed in GameCamera (and take on any of the settings such as FOV). When you want to zoom back out, swap back to a default position GameCamera.

 

Thanks for the reply.

SOLVED - added mouselook to my main game camera and it worked by reloading the project.

 

Hey,

Yep, did as you say - copied the menu manager as there's a lot not created by default but worked through it and now understand a LOT more, thanks for your support here and by email!

SOLVED!

Kris

 

Hey there, really enjoying Adventure Creator so far, it's helping me get past all the hurdles of getting started on a game without having to build all the tech first. Very thankful for that!

I have a question about 2D character walkcycles - I was planning on making characters that consist of seperate limbs, all as children of the player's gameobject, and then animate those using the Dope Sheet. I have a character set up like that now with a sideways walkcycle and it works very well.

But I started thinking about how to do the front and back walkcycles and I'm not sure how to implement that. I mean what is the smartest way to make the up, down and diagonal views in Unity? Do I need seperate character rigs for that? How does the Animator handle that? Is it maybe smarter to just use a single sprite and animate the character itself in after effects or some such?

I came across this tutorial which gets close, but that relies on making your own player movement script, I'd obviously rather hook it into the AC movement system.

I've only seen a brief mention of how to do this with 2DToolkit but not how to do it with Unity 2D. Is this something that will be covered in the upcoming 2D tutorials Chris? If so I will just wait for that. But maybe someone already has some advice.

Cheers!

 

REQUESTS

Any chance you could set a variable on triggers to allow cameras to activate them?

Example: I have cameras that zoom to interactive objects and it would be great to set off some audio triggers on arrival.

Any chance you can add a variable to the player walk to field that puts the action in a secondary position to camera movement?

Example: I'd like a hotspot to activate a camera move THEN start the player moving to the marker. As it is now, the player moves first then the camera follows.

 

I know it's way too broad, and it varies a lot, but are you planning on a map system? Something like Monkey Island 2 for instance.

 

Question:

Is there an innBuilt Solution so we can change player movement values (walk speed, turn speed) via actions?

E.G- Player pick´s box, andwhille carrying box, walk speed value is diferent (slower, to mimic weight) or if player is injured and walk animation and speed reflects it

If no such actions currently exist, would you consider add then in next update?

 

It's looking like next week now, I'm afraid - many bugfixes and other features are in the works. It'll be worth the wait!

Yep, it works just fine on iOS and Android. There're also options to "click and drag" the player around, and to touch hotspots to highlight them before interacting with them.

Most likely yes, I'm afraid. The GUI system is pretty heavily integrated within the kit, but the advantage is that it's completely customisable. You can use it to create buttons on-screen that simulate keyboard presses, so hopefully you should be able to create this joystick GUI using the Menu Manager.

You can create journals using the Menu Manager, and add pages to them in-game.

The camera system isn't attached to the robot so much as it changes based on the position of a target object. You can change the target, or the behaviour of cameras, using the camera inspector. A traditional third-person camera is on the to-do list.

Tutorials / demos will probably only cover using a base sprite animated in another tool, but changing "view" in this way isn't too bad. You can probably just swap out each limb with a different sprite (e.g. you change the foot gameobject from a side-on sprite to a facing-the-camera sprite), and then animate the same objects.

Activating Triggers with a Camera would involve attaching a Collider to the Camera, so for performance this isn't ideal. However, your example can already be implemented by delaying a sound using the Engine: Pause game Action before it. If you set the Cutscene to run in the background, the Pause game Action will become a simple delay timer.

This is also possible already. Set the Interaction such that the Player "does nothing" rather than Move to Marker, then use the Character: Move Action inside the Interaction itself, after the Camera: Switch.

Is this not already possible? All you'd need are Hotspots for each location, a locked GameCamera and the Player out of view. Or, if you wanted the player on-screen, you could either move the camera out far or shrink the player down using the Object: Transform Action.

The Character: Animate Action can be used to change the Player's "Standard" animations such as walk and idle, but it's not possible to change the move speed variables right now. I will consider this, but I can't guarantee it'll make the next update.

 

Requests

1- InBuilt Action that give us the control to change textures/shaders from character or assets

example/aplications - Character customization, changing cloth textures

2- InBuilt Action/feature that gives us the possibility of using/recording "user" imputs in dialogues

Example/aplications- NPC uses players choices in dialogue/speeches, NPC knows players name (if players name is an inicial input from user)

 

Hi Chris, the whole software you did saved me a lot of time. Thanks for your dedication and care.
I'm thinking to buy 2D Toolkit to use its camera and put it in your engine.
I don't have right now 2D Toolkit but before buying it I'd want to know if that is possible? It's easy? Any workaround that I have to do?
I think MaaS already done this, so please if you read this can you briefly guide me?

Thanks to you both.

 

Hey!

Both the Adventure Creator's 2D camera and 2D toolkit camera use matrix transformation and are not "compatible" but it doesnt matter really. The AC camera do it for panning/zoom and 2Dtk for multiresolution support, so I preffer to have multiresolution and move the camera around like any normal camera..

So I use the project like if it were a 3D project (AC settings) with a 3D main camera, orthographic and with 2dtkcamera script configured.. For scrolling, I set on the target start camera with 3D follow on X axis with limits on left and right.

I would preffer to have the option of a moving 2D cam like the 3D one without transformations, just in case there will be any other setting that depends of the 2D or 3D setting of the project. But as you see, this can be achieved moving a 3D AC cam only on one axis hehe

 

Thanks a lot for your answer MaaS.
I'm trying to achieve this kind of effects with the camera.
Do I really need 2DToolkit Camera? Or just with de AC Camera I'm ok?
Ideally I would like to have the AC 2.5d camera but with panning.
What's the best approach?

 

Hmm..

I think you dont need 2DTK Camera for this... I use it because I want the multiresolution support for handling different aspect ratios, strech black bands and things like that for PC/iOS/Android. And use the AC 3D camera script for handling the horizontal scrolling. For parallax I use a 2DTK script where I have 3 cameras, one for each layer following the main camera a different speeds.

But the effect you showed it's a mix between panning, zoom with parallax layers. Panning and zooming is part of the AC 2D camera, and I think Chris added recently parallax... if the parallax works with the zoom it should work like the video you posted but I didn't try it myself.

 

Anyone have any ideas on how to get text to appear during a cutscene without the need for dialogue buttons?

Example: Player enters a room and descriptive text appears and then fades out without the need for the player to perform any actions.

I've been trying to figure this out and have come up empty!

 

I still want the best of both worlds, I need the multiresolution too.
Your rig sound very complete but sofisticated I reckon. I may have to go deeper into that, first I may have to buy 2DTK because without having it everythings sounds strange (one camera for each layer??).
Thanks again for your help!

 

Just use the Play Speech Action, but don't assign a Character to say the line.

This opens up a whole can of worms, and I don't think it's possible to provide a generic-enough Action that suits everyone's needs. You're better off writing a custom one, or invoking a custom script using the Object: Send Message Action.

Are you referring to text inputs?

 

Any chance of adding an event system for more complex scripting scenarios? I mean we could add our own global event handlers to listen or override common events.

As example for chat you have the StartDialog (Char _speakerChar, string message, int lineNumber, string language) in your code which could check if there is something assigned to SpeechManager.OnStartDialog by user and then call the user assigned handler and pass same parameters and maybe additionally see if it requested the original event to cancel. These common events could be hotspot activations or any interactions, conversations, menus etc. and would allow more flexible system for scripters.

At the moment having similar things and capturing these globally means we have to hack around the code and redo/merge them with each update

 

Yes Text imputs, and the ability to use then in dialogue and speech actions.

 

We're right now in R&D for looking for the right Tools for our 2D Adventure Game.
How is pathfinding realised in AVC? Can you set paths with waypoints and send the Player to anywhere on that path (not the waypoints only)?

Also... we're planning to implement several minigames/puzzles. They're triggered by an Event and/or a click on an object. I guess it's no Problem to o implement that by our own to your code (extend it etc)?

 

And not two hours after submission, 1.12 is out! It's by far the biggest update Adventure Creator has yet gotten, and brings in many things like a new ActionList Editor window, PlayMaker support, lots of 2D features, and even a new 2D Demo!

Seems like quite a can of worms to open, as it would probably involve something of a re-write. I see the advantage, though you could in this case always write an alternative Dialogue: Play Speech Action and use that one instead of the vanilla. I won't rule it out completely, but for now please understand that I need to focus on keeping the current system stable.

OK. Might involve adding strings as a variable type. I will look into it.

You can only send a Character to the end of any path, though you can also instruct a Character to move to an arbitrary point, and they will dynamically generate a path of their own to get there.

Shouldn't be any trouble. By flicking a single enum from Normal to Cutscene through a custom script, you can effectively "turn off" Adventure Creator until your minigame's over.

 

Awesome! Just in time to dig into it

Is the documentation updated for the new ActionList window and other new non-2D features?

 

Just a few quick questions:

_1 Is there a new 2d Tutorial?

_2 I struck the tree with the swing, the lunch dropped out of the tree and another bird grabbed it. After that I could no longer drag the worm from inventory to objects. It just says it's wiggly in my pocket. Is this a bug or supposed to happen?

_3 What is up with saving and web players? Does it work with them now?

_4 Is there an option that the player could name saves games?

_5 Whenever you see the "gear" or the "Magnifying glass" it looks like the alpha channel isn't working. Is this a style thing or a bug?

This Update is looking truly awesome! Keep up the Fantastic work!!

 

Hey man, great work on the 2D stuff. A small bug report, on the 2D demo, the bird on top of the bench in the demo is invisible.

Quick question: If using 2D, can I have regular dialogs (selecting text instead of icons), and can I have a 2 click system for inventory? Like Curse of Monkey Island for instance.

 

Thanks Chris! This update is excellent. I'm able to go much further along with my project now with these updates.

In my project, I've added a couple lines in the Char.cs file that keeps the Player from sliding when stopped on navmesh slope. In my instance, I want my player to stop on a staircase without sliding to the bottom.

I'm just setting it to this while idle: rigidbody.constraints = RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeAll
then back to this when I need to start moving: rigidbody.constraints = RigidbodyConstraints.FreezeRotation

 

There seems to be another update. But the asset store won't let me download it. Just keeps saying "Please Wait.

 

I just saw the 2D Demo. Really great. Also I looked into the two newer 2D Tutorial Videos. In the Video "creating a 2D character" you're referencing to 2dToolkit. But I saw an reply here, where it's said that we could use the new 2D Tools from unity.

So there's no longer a need for 2D Tooklit? I would really appreciate this, since I want to work with the native 2D Sprite/Spritesheet Tools from unity 4.x.

 

How can I use 2dtoolkit Camera with AC 3D ? I've an approach but the 2dtoolkit camer anchor is not working properly with AC 3D camera, maybe I'm missing something. Someone has this working?

 

2D demo seems to be broken on the 1.21a. The Brian's sprite not found. Dialogs only appear like the 3D demo, I can't see the text over the character like in the web demo.

 

Just wanted to report an odd notification. I just created a new scene, created new managers, clicked Organise room objects, and then set the Pathfinding method to Unity Navigation. Now every time I save the scene (which seems to be permanently "dirty"), I get something like this:

I have no other specific plugin tabs open besides AC, Lightmapping, and Navigation. Of course, I have no actual navmesh in the scene since I just created the scene. Normally I don't pay much attention to the leaked log lines, but over 4000 times on a brand new scene suggests maybe something is happening every tick of the editor or something. ... That guess seems plausible as I saved the scene later and the count jumped up to over 10000.

Note, I don't get this notification when I create a test scene, like a camera and cube and sphere without any AC stuff in it. I even have the AC tab open just in case, but saving the test scene does not generate this. It only is happening in the new scene I'm creating with room objects in it.

 

Yes - the same for me, can confirm that. Instead of Brian, there's the Robot moving around.
Also the UI for the demo is missing and you cant do any Actions (pickup, look etc).

 

Yes.

Coming soon.

I took the opportunity to have the 2D demo show off an alternative interface. To use an inventory item on a hotspot, you first click the hotspot and choose the item, but this only appears for hotspots that'll have a specific interaction.

Indeed it does!

Have a look at the top of the Settings Manager, you should be able to set them there.

Is it different to it's look in the webplayer? They should be identical.

Of course, everything's independant. Again, the 2D demo just shows off a few new features, not just 2D-related. Check the Conversation menu in the Menu Manager - from there you can display text-based dialogue options, and in the Settings Manager you can change the interface type for inventory.

Glad to hear it - reviews in the Asset Store are always welcome, too! Thanks for the code info, I'll see if this ought to be integrated officially.

AC is now fully-compatible with Unity's native 2D tools!

Be sure to set the managers to their 2D variants before running the 2D demo. The upcoming tutorial will explain this.

Hm. I've seen this myself many times, but it's never had a count so high for me. I will tinker around and see if I can find the source.

Is this working yet? The update was merely a quick-removal of an unwanted "2.5D Demo" folder that slipped into the "2D Demo" folder by mistake. There's nothing in it of value, so please ignore it if it's managed to slip into your project.