★ Game Creator ★

Thank you for your clarification! I will try this out!!

 

Hi everyone, today I will be hosting a LIVE DEV Interview with catsoft studios
http://twitch.tv/TheMessyCoder


Come join us today 9pm UK time, 11pm EET, 1pm PT, 4pm ET.
>>> https://bit.ly/gamecreator-u

 

Thanks for having me @TheMessyCoder ! Looking forward to the next one!

 

Thanks for coming on, I had a great time. And I beat your game at last.

 

Anyone having experience using GC with HQ Farmhouse/Residentual? I can't open doors and windows with the Character. I change the tag in the script of the object to "Player" as the Characters tag is Player, but it won't work. Managed to make it work once while changing tags during runtime (which of course disappeared after stopping runtime), but 99% of the time it won't work. Any suggestions or tips for a workaround?

UPDATE: I figured a few things. There are 2 specific things that makes opening doors and windows possible. Hope it helps with solutions.

1: They open when I jump to a specific spot on a specific distance from the object.
2: If I leave "MainCamera" as the objects script target tag, start the game, pause, change the tag to "Player". (doesn't work if it's "Player" before running the game). First thing I tried is changing "MainCamera" to "Player" inside script, but didn't do anything.

 

Can you provide some screenshots of your project? Otherwise it's a bit difficult to imagine

There are many ways to approach this, but the simplest one is adding a Trigger with a Box Collider on each door (you can create a prefab so you can duplicate it as many times as you want). Then, set the Trigger "On Enter". When this happens, use an Action to either play an animation where the door opens (use the Play Animation action) or rotate it using the Transform Rotate action).

I you want the door to automatically close when the character/player leaves the trigger, add another Trigger, but this time, set it to "On Exit" and use the inverse action from above (play the animation of the door closing or rotate it so it's closed).

Hope this helps! Cheers!

 

Hey, was watching the tutorials on youtube and the first Tips and Tricks uses a Wait Random function. It doesn't seem to be available any more. Is there an alternative way to do this other than creating a condition for each period?

 

Sure. A year or so ago we saw that we had the Wait and the Random Wait actions inside the core package. We thought that the second one was maybe a bit too specific, so we removed it from the core package and placed it in the Hub.

You can download community-made (as well as some made by us) Actions, Conditions and Triggers following the link: hub.gamecreator.io. If you search for random wait, you'll see the Action you're looking for.

 

Lifesaver. Thanks heaps.

 

Is there a way to have a on stat change listen so that if something changes more than once something will fire off?
Trying to have a level up animation but it only works the first time.

 

The Stats module comes with an example showing how to do that. Check out this link in the documentation, which goes over this particular topic: https://docs.gamecreator.io/stats/stats/common-use-cases/levels-and-xp.

Basically, you use a Trigger set to "On Stat Change" and detect when the stat increases its value. It fire every time the selected stat increases, not only the first time.

 

If you use Game Creator are you preventing yourself from using independent character controllers or other Unity assets like "Mesh Slicer"?

Like say I want to use this character controller: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/physics/character-movement-fundamentals-144966

Or want to implement Mesh Slicer at some point: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/modeling/mesh-slicer-59618

Would using the above assets not be 'compatible' with "Game Creator"? I don't really understand how GC works so I'm not sure what it takes to make something work with it. It is very tempting to use GC for the awesome Combat/Inventory/Save/Interaction systems but I'm scared it'll restrict me from using other awesome stuff that's not GC-supported.

 

@mckelynn it's a tricky question. Game Creator uses its own character system, which is tailored to the whole Game Creator ecosystem. You can use another character controller for the player or for some other characters, but you'll lose access to Game Creator features related to characters. This sounds obvious, but some users are not aware of this. For example, the Stats & Gestures system requires our own character.

As for the Mesh Slicer, really depends on where you use it, but the answer is the same: You can use it along Game Creator. However, if you want Game Creator to interact with this package (like making use of the methods from that package) you'll have to create a custom Action.

Hope this makes sense as a general rule of thumb: You can use any asset with Game Creator. However, if you want GC to interact with these other packages, you'll need to provide the code that bridges between them.

 

Hi folks,
Newbie problems - perhaps you can help me:
Here is a link to a video that demonstrates my problems:

Let me know if you can help me with my Game Creator problems:
1. Game Creator actions are only done once.
2. How to trigger play video with Game Creator?
3. Why does everything look ugly? It looks fine in Scene-mode but in Game-mode it is pixelated. - probably a Unity question not a Game Creator issue
4. I noticed an event system object was created - where did that come from and do I need it?

If I can figure these issues out, I will create a tutorial for newbies - like myself.

- using Unity 2019.3.12f1. - Game Creator 1.17

 

Hi @SteedMaker , thanks for the detailed video. I'll break down your issues below so it's easier to go over them

That's because the Actions in your Conditions have the "Destroy After Finishing" checkbox enabled. This means that the action will be automatically destroyed after the first time they get executed. Unmarking this option will allow to execute them over and over again.

Currently there's no Action that controls video playback. However, should be pretty easy to add this. Would you mind adding a request in our support channel? That way we can keep track of it, discuss the idea and the extend of it and make sure we add it in the next update. The page is: support.gamecreator.io.

As you mention it's a Unity thing. If you open the Game View's aspect ratio, you'll see you can change to low resolution to save some precious performance while working in the Editor

Game Creator uses a wide variety of systems under the hood. In order to avoid high CPU spikes, we load these systems only when they are needed. The Event system is one of them, and the more features you use, the more systems you'll see appear in the hierarchy (usually under the DontDestroyOnLoad scene). Do not worry, simply ignore them, as they are part of what controls Game Creator. For our next major iteration we'll most likely "hide" these from the user so they do not disturb you.

Hope this solves your questions. Happy game making!

 

Brilliant! Thanks for your timely and effective feedback. I don't remember adjusting the "destroy after finishing" but I must have. I am starting to like Game Creator once I got past the initial learning curve. I will create a tutorial for other newbies.

 

Awesome! Let me know if you record it. I've recently created a new section in the tutorials where I try to keep a collection of video tutorials for everyone to enjoy: https://docs.gamecreator.io/quickstart/tutorials. Cheers!

 

Sorry, one more question on this issue. I went to try and recreate this project from scratch for a tutorial but the sounds repeat when I click the buttons. I have compared the original project with the new one but I don't see any differences. I don't understand why the sounds would keep repeating when the action is done.

 

Depends on the Action you're using. If you use the "Play Sound" it will only play the audio clip once every time the action is executed. However, if you use the "Play Music" Action, it will start playing the audio clip, but also loop it until you use the "Stop Music" Action.

 

Will you plan to add climbing addon?

 

Thanks again. Okay, I double checked that and indeed I had mistakenly used Play Music rather than Play Sound. I can now finish my tutorial.

 

Yup, I'm currently working on it. It's going to be called Traversal and will allow, among other things to climb.

 

Hi everyone,

I ran into two problems while using the GC. I thought of posting it over here since if a solution is found it might help another beginners too if they are facing similar issues, and also the experienced users might already have an idea about fixing it.

1. I have player focus option turned on so that when I click on the middle mouse button the melee player will start focusing on the enemy character which I have set as a target. The query is If I have to duplicate that enemy multiple times in a scene how can I have this player focus option function properly because currently it's not recognizing a second gameobject.
2. For a melee character enemy, to trigger the death condition, I'm using the ragdoll action item by checking if the enemy health attribute is less than 0 and then setting the ragdoll.
   The condition is successfully getting executed but the ragdoll is getting instantiated two times.

Can anyone please help me with these issues? I tried getting around it but with little progress.

 

The thing is that we wanted to provide a very bare-bones example scene with the Melee module. We're currently working on a tutorial that will show, among many other things, how to pick the closest enemy to the player and put the focus on it.

But just so you can get started, you'll need an empty List Variable component. You can use the Action called "Gather Components By Distance", which will get all components (by default the Character component), including the player and place them in order inside a List Variable. All that you have to do then, is take the second element of the list and assign it to the Player's Focus.

Can you provide a screenshot of that? I'm not sure what you mean when you say the ragdoll gets instantiated twice. You mean there's two characters instead of one?

 

Thanks for that!! It would be really helpful for beginners to have a better handle on the melee module.

I went through the TheMessyCoder interview and also got an idea on how to implement this. For others who are looking for a solution they can actually watch the latest TheMessyCoder interview with Catsoft Studios, and at an hour mark the solution is being implemented.

I have uploaded a short video which depicts the bug as below:

As you could see, the enemy ragdoll gets instantiated two times when the health stat is below 0.
Hope this explains the issue.

Thanks!

 

Did you ever get this to work with VR?

 

Hi guys, im about to publish my first game using game creator. i only need to work on the save system. can anyone please help me how do i save the global variables using this tool? because when i open on android it doesnt load using the preset save/load functions. please help im stucked with this

 

Is it possible to use in 2D games?

 

Hey sorry for the super late reply. I don't know why I didn't get a notification for the latest replies. This usually happens when the Animator is trying to play an animation when the player is in ragdoll state. Could you make sure you're not inputing commands while the character is in ragdoll?

If you're using the Behavior Graph, simply add a Selector node and on the left-most node, check if the player is dead. If so, do nothing.

The Load Game action loads a previously saved game with all the variables values. If variables are not being saved, make sure the checkbox at the right of the name is checked (this is a bit hidden and I'll probably have to work out a better solution).

A straight answer is no. Mostly because of the character controller, which is meant to be used in 3D. However, if you use a custom 2D character controller, you can easily create Triggers that detect 2D collisions. But you'll probably have to create some specific code, so we prefer to say that 2D is not supported out of the box.

 

I wish you offered a bundle deal... I'm tempted to buy everything at once!

 

I'm using the Shooter module and the impact effects don't seem to work right. It says in the manual;

"Each instance of Prefab Impact Effect will be oriented towards reflected direction between the normal of the collided object and the direction of the scan. This means that if the impact prefab contains an explosion of debris, it should be oriented upwards."

But in practice it just points back at the player, along the raycast vector. The thing is, even if the intended orientation was working, it shouldn't do that.

Regardless of what it seems like it should do (ricocheting), basically ALL games orient the impact effect directly out from the surface they hit. eg. Water impacts shoot straight up because water is always level. NOT at some calculated angle between the raycast and surface normal. Dirt, metal, rock, they all shoot straight out, perpendicular to the surface the bullet hits. And it just follows for every other surface type. Try it out, it looks much better. Or provide some options.

 

I have a very contextual question but still users of Game Creator can guide me.
I'm new to GC just purchased it in the last Sale.
But I have a very specific RPG creator Asset, but want to check if I can achieve this in GC.
I have a project where I need too complete a small RPG demo in 10 days time. So can I basically finish a demo is my question.
- I need a simple 3rd person style RPG game where Player can tank with few NPC's, reaches a check point and finishes the Level.
- Need conversations to appear in a dialogue box
- After the hero talks as he goes exploring and then when an Enemy appears a battle should be initiated.
- The battle should be between two enemies as a turn based battle system.
- The battle camera is shown from a 40 degree top down angle
- After the battle is finished a Popup should be shown
- An Inventory system with selectable items.

Assets I want to use along with Game Creator
- I will be using Gaia Pro for level generation,
- Microsplat for Terrain
- Enviro for Weather
- Amplify shader

My knowledge on Unity and coding for a 3d game level is around 2. Previously I just coded a galaxian 2D type game in Unity and nothing more.
For a 3D game, I can just code a 3rd person controller, with simple movement mapped to keyboard; instantiate objects randomly on the scene; and trigger animations / even when the player reaches a trigger.

So the important question, will I be able to achieve the main components of this Demo listed, essentially in 5 days (keeping the rest 5 days for polishing and tweaking)


Thanks

 

Hi, quick question from a beginner! I own and i've been learning to use Playmaker. Then i discovered and just purchased Game Creator! (become very dizzy at that point) Can these two systems play together nicely, or is it recommended to use just one or the other?

Thank you!
David

 

Despite it's common to think that both packages exclude each other (both have visual scripting tools inside) I always encourage using it along another visual scripting tool, like Playmaker or Bolt.

Game Creator's visual scripting is based on lists and each instruction/node is an entire set of nodes from Playmaker. This means that with a single instruction you get a lot of functionality.

However, this has the downside that you can't "code" as you would normally do with C#. Here's where using Game Creator along Playmaker/Bolt comes into play. You can create your game using Game Creator's built-in Actions, but if you need something very specific to your game, you can either create a custom GC Action or use Playmaker to create that mechanic. Some users have been kind enough to provide code that bridges between Playmaker and Game Creator (see link below).

https://hutonggames.com/playmakerforum/index.php?topic=20961.0

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks! great to know they can play nice together. I've been using Game Creator for a day now, and honestly, saying this as someone who isn't a coder (artist) I'm really impressed with what i could accomplished very quickly. The project i'm working on is just a simple adventure / res evil style experience, and with a very little knowledge of Unity and no knowledge of GC, i was able to begin prototyping simple mechanics, cut scenes etc very quickly; within hours, not days or weeks lol. Really hope you continue to build new modules etc, i'm definitely on board for the future Thanks again!

 

Glad to hear this Happy game making!

 

Hi, I am trying to figure out a problem with setting up a custom condition with Behaviors using the following code:

Code (CSharp):

1. namespace GameCreator.Core
2. {
3.     using System.Collections;
4.     using System.Collections.Generic;
5.     using UnityEngine;
6.     using UnityEngine.Events;
7.     using MyInput;
8.  
9.     [AddComponentMenu("")]
10.     public class PrimaryButtonPressed : ICondition
11.     {
12.         bool init = false;
13.         MyPlayerActions playerActions;
14.  
15.         public override bool Check()
16.         {
17.             Debug.Log("init is " + init);
18.             if (!init) { playerActions = MyPlayerInput.Instance.playerActions; init = true; }
19.             else { if (playerActions.Primary.WasPressed) { return true; } }
20.  
21.             return false;
22.         }
23.      
24.         #if UNITY_EDITOR
25.         public static new string NAME = "My Inputs/Primary Button Pressed";
26.         #endif
27.     }
28. }

For some reason, the bool variable "init" is saved when I stop and start the scene in the editor?! So the first time, "init" starts as false, then turns true. But when I stop the scene and start again, "init" starts as true. Are bool variables saved in conditions using scriptable objects or something?

Also, is there a way to initialize the variables in a condition? Awake, OnEnable, and Start don't work. That's why I am trying to use the init bool.

 

The init variable should go back to false when exiting playmode. However, calling the Actions again will not reset it. Not sure if this resolves your question.

Not sure I understand what you're trying to do, but your code snippet has some branching problems. For example, if Init is not initialized, you initialize it, but immediately return false. Instead, I think it should initialize the value (you do this), but then use the playerActions to return whether the primary button was pressed or not.

Despite this, I think this code could be simplified. Why are you initializing your code to get the playerActions from a singleton class, when you can already access it directly? Something like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. public override bool Check()
2. {
3.     return MyPlayerInput.Instance.playerActions.Primary.WasPressed;
4. }

Hope this helps

 

That's the weird thing. The init variable isn't going back to false when I exit playmode. It starts as true when I hit playmode again.

Well originally I wanted to initialize the variables in OnEnable, but that method doesn't run. So this is me messing around with the code trying to get something to allow me to initialize the variables. I am getting "playerActions" because I plan to add many more possible buttons to this script. Using this script across a behavior tree, I can avoid long lists of triggers and conditions.

 

Here is the start of a conditional input script where I am integrating InControl:

Code (CSharp):

1. public class ButtonPress : ICondition
2. {
3.     MyPlayerActions playerActions;
4.  
5.     public enum ButtonAction
6.     {
7.         Primary,
8.         Secondary,
9.         Jump,
10.         Left,
11.         Right,
12.         Up,
13.         Down,
14.         LookLeft,
15.         LookRight,
16.         LookUp,
17.         LookDown
18.     }
19.  
20.     public enum PressType
21.     {
22.         IsPressed,        // bool, is currently pressed
23.         WasPressed,        // bool, pressed since previous tick
24.         WasReleased,    // bool, released since previous tick
25.         HasChanged,        // bool, has changed since previous tick
26.         Value,            // float, in range -1..1 for axes, 0..1 for buttons / triggers
27.         LastState,        // bool, previous tick state
28.         LastValue,        // float, previous tick value
29.     }
30.  
31.     public ButtonAction buttonAction = ButtonAction.Primary;
32.     public PressType buttonPress = PressType.WasPressed;
33.  
34.     // EXECUTABLE: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
35.  
36.     public override bool Check()
37.     {
38.         if (playerActions == null) { playerActions = MyPlayerInput.Instance.playerActions; }
39.         else
40.         {
41.             switch (this.buttonPress)
42.             {
43.                 case PressType.IsPressed:
44.                     switch (buttonAction)
45.                     {
46.                         case ButtonAction.Primary: return playerActions.Primary.IsPressed;
47.                         case ButtonAction.Secondary: return playerActions.Secondary.IsPressed;
48.                     }
49.                     return false;
50.                 case PressType.WasPressed:
51.                     switch (this.buttonAction)
52.                     {
53.                         case ButtonAction.Primary: return playerActions.Primary.WasPressed;
54.                         case ButtonAction.Secondary: return playerActions.Secondary.WasPressed;
55.                     }
56.                     return false;
57.             }
58.         }
59.  
60.         return false;
61.     }
62. }

 

Hi @Catsoft-Studios,

I can't seem to find a way to access variables from multiple lists on the Behavior Graph. Invoker gives me access to the single list on the graph's gameobject, but that seems to be it. I tried storing gameobjects with lists on the blackboard, but I don't see a way to access lists on those blackboard gameobjects.

I need my Behavior Tree to be able to access multiple variable lists. Do I need to code that myself, or am I missing something?

 

Guys, there’s a bug I’m experiencing, simply the character/player repeatedly doing the ragdoll death animation additionally once or twice at times, even though the destroy after finishing this particular action is checked. Sometimes it behaves normally, sometimes it doesn’t. Any suggestions?

 

Would the character normally play an animation (like a melee hit reaction)? If so, try stopping the current animation with the stop gesture action before ragdolling.

When ragdolled, I think the melee clip plays on the character with no effect and the ragdoll resets after the melee animation stops. I'm hoping for a melee API to be able to change some behaviors.

 

I'm interested in implementing a rigidbody based Character, rather than CharacterController. It looks like I'd have to add code to the CharacterLocomotion class to add this third option. Possibly the LocomotionSystem classes as well. Would that be the way to go? If I buy the Melee module, does it have direct references to the CharacterController component that also need to be updated as well?

 

How to avoid the adventure camera going through walls, while rotating it, and spoiling the whole scene. Should some collision element be added to the camera so it stops when it hits a wall?

Edit:
So it appears if the player is too close to the wall things with the adventure camera become messy. You are able to see through walls what's on the other side. Seems a collider needs to be put before the walls each time to prevent the player from going too close.

 

This usually happens if you're trying to play a Gesture on the same frame as the ragdoll state is enabled. If that's not the case, would you mind opening a thread in our support forum with some minimal scene with reproduction steps?

Unfortunately yes, the Melee has direct references to the Character Controller. Mostly when translating root-motion authored animations to Character Controller curves. Creating a rigidbody based character would still be possible, but would require rewriting a great deal of the core, and updating Game Creator to newer versions would be a hassle, since this could would need to be updated too.

You more or less answered the question yourself, but beware of the "zoom" field. By default the camera can avoid scene obstacles, but it will not zoom in more than the "minZoom" field. You can decrease this value close to zero, but then the camera would go inside the Player, which I'm not sure if it's desirable.

 

Thanks for answering my question. Maybe in the next version you could create some kind of wrapper class for the CharacterController or something. Just an idea.

The problem I've had with CharacterControllers in the past is when I have a player character melee-fighting a giant monster. I start to have collision problems.

So I can't use a CharacterController for the monster, because the monster needs a compound collider to achieve comparable granularity to the player. I implement a rigidbody-based monster.

When my rigidbody-based monster and a CharacterController-based player are moving and collide, then the monster will bounce-off the player uncontrollably. It's like some static collider teleported directly into the rigidbody- the rigidbody just goes crazy flies off into space.

 

Yeah, actually we're thinking about making the character controller much more flexible in the next major iteration (though that will be released in a year or so), so we can easily support not only rigidbody-based characters, but other character controllers, such as Unity's Kinematica. I can't give more details, since it's still work in progress and things may change in the future, but the tests we did so far resulted in really promising results.

But right now it's a bit difficult to support, since animation-based modules (Melee, Shooter and Traversal) depend a lot on root-motion authored animations and we have everything built using a combination of the Character Controller and Navmesh Agents. Sorry for the bummer

 

No problem. I'm sure I'll find a work-around for these issues.

I'm very impressed with Game Creator overall. It's probably the best, most-comprehensive game framework I've seen on the Asset Store.

 

How to give damage to non "game creator" character with melee and shooter modules?