[RELEASED] TopDown Engine by More Mountains [new v3.0 : damage types, damage resistance, and more!]

I've been working on this asset for 2 years now, so it's with great pleasure that I present you what I think is my best asset so far, the TopDown Engine.

Buy the TopDown Engine on the Asset Store right now!

One of the questions I get the most with the Corgi Engine is "can I create a game like Zelda / Hotline Miami / Final Fight with the Corgi Engine?". Well no, you can't, because the Corgi Engine was created for platformers / sidescroller games, not top down games like these. But with the TopDown Engine, you can!

I've tried to match the Corgi Engine in terms of quality and content, and I think it works. I hope you'll like this new engine as much as I do.

You can learn more about the engine on its dedicated page, where you'll also find a support contact form should you need help with anything. And please don't hesitate to use this thread to discuss future updates and features you'd like to see added to the Engine.

The TopDown Engine is a complete solution for top-down games, available on the Unity Asset Store.

It's been designed to act as a foundation for all sorts of top down games, from dungeon crawlers like Binding of Isaac, to adventure games like old Zelda games, through beat em all like Final Fight or gun heavy games like Hotline Miami.

It's a fast, production ready, versatile, lightweight, and easy to extend solution that will help you give a serious boost to your project.

Here's the release trailer for it :

GETTING STARTED?



You can start by having a look at the functional documentation, which covers all aspects of the TopDown Engine. There's also a complete documentation for all classes, which are all heavily commented, so it's very easy to understand and improve on as long as you have basic Unity understanding. If you don't want to get into code, there's still a lot you can do in the inspector or simply by replacing assets! There are also video tutorials to get you started.

PLAYER ABILITIES



To allow you to create the characters you want, whether they're controlled by the player, or are AI enemies or friends, the engine comes with two character controllers : a 2D controller and a 3D controller, to cover all your needs.

Along with the controller, you'll find a complete Character system, organized in dedicated abilities, to get your character ready in seconds thanks to the AutoBuild Character feature.

Abilities included in the engine include move, run, walk, crouch, crawl, dash, cone of vision, fall down holes, handle one or more weapon, activate buttons, jump, 3D pathfinding, push, walk and slide on slopes, use moving platforms, slow down time, and more.

Animation parameters are handled by the engine as well, so you can focus on what's important. The engine uses Unity's native animator system, which makes it compatible with any animation solution out there (Spine, spritesheets, animated meshes, etc).

DEMO LEVELS



The TopDown Engine comes packed with 10 demo scenes, set in 4 different universes : Koala, Loft, Minimal2D and Minimal3D. These demos range from “complete” levels to demo scenes focusing on specific aspects of the engine, such as pathfinding, AI, or weapons setups.

ADVANCED AI FOR YOUR ENEMIES AND FRIENDS



To power up all your AI agents, whether they're NPCs, enemies or allies, the engine comes with the same advanced AI system as the Corgi Engine. Built around a "brain" and a combination of actions and decisions, it's a battle proven, robust system that will cover most use cases. And if you're going for something really specific, it's super easy to extend.

Here are some of the actions included in the engine : move towards target, shoot, wait, change weapon, aim at target, pathfind your way to a target, patrol a set of points, move randomly.

And here are some of the decisions you'll be able to base your transitions on : target in range, target in line of sight, distance to target, being grounded, being hit, health level, target's state, time.

In total, that's more than 25 actions and decisions ready to use. And no code is required, all that is setup from the inspector, and allows to create complex behaviours, such as "patrol this set of node until a target comes in range. Try to aim at it, if there's a line of sight, shoot, otherwise move towards target. Get back to patrolling after 10 seconds of this if the target isn't in range anymore".

ADVANCED WEAPONS & INVENTORY



The Engine comes with a complete weapons solution, building on top of 3 years of expertise in weapons in the Corgi Engine. Whether you want to create projectile based weapons (rifles, guns, shotguns, plasma guns, rocket launchers...), or melee weapons (fists, swords, axes...), it's got you covered. You can even combine weapons into combo weapons, allowing you to chain attacks like you would in any beat em all. Game feel is built into these weapons, and you'll be able to natively add VFX, animations, recoil, spread, scren shakes, flashes, and much, much more, to have your weapons feel extremely good everytime you shoot.

If you want to store your weapons, the TopDown Engine includes as a gift the Inventory Engine, More Mountains' dedicated solution for inventory management. It'll allow you to create and manage inventories and items (collectibles, usable, equippable...). It will also handle ammo management (store different types of ammo, decide how it's consumed), and will allow you to create keys to unlock chests, doors, and pretty much everything you want with a new and super flexible system.

Of course, all this comes with save and load mechanisms so you can keep your inventory constant across sessions, and your players will be able to pick their game up where they left it.

FEEDBACKS AND GAME FEEL



Game feel is More Mountains' core pillar, and it's built at the core of the TopDown Engine. Everything is in place so that each interaction can have proper feedback, and feels good. You'll be able to define for most weapons and ability, straight from the inspector, a number of feedbacks to trigger when the ability or weapon gets used, or when the enemy explodes, etc. These include, among other effects : camera shake, freeze frames, shells, animated health bars, screen flashes, flickers, trails, time modification, muzzle flash, knockback, sounds, projectile spread, chromatic aberration, animations, particles, and much more.

STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE



Like the Corgi Engine's reviews will show, More Mountains focuses on excellence, Unity good practices, and state of the art coding and structure. The TopDown Engine is no exception. It's fully documented and commented, and both a great place to start if you're new at Unity, and a great foundation if you're a seasoned developer.

PACKED WITH RESOURCES



The asset contains all you need to create and release a game, and that includes common game mechanics such as sound management, scene loading, save and load system, health bars, checkpoints, time management, pause mechanics, auto character creation, as well as a full game loop : splash screen, start screen, options, pause, game over.

It also comes with tons of helpers to help at every stage of development. From small ones like a pixel perfect camera controller or an FPS counter, to large systems like achievements or a full UI solution, the engine is full of gems that you'll love to use.

EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO CREATE AMAZING LEVELS



The Engine comes full of ready-to-use props to use in your levels, whether you're building a 2D scene with sprites or tile maps, or a 3D one. Playable characters, enemies, weapons, projectiles, ground, walls, teleporters, doors, falling platforms, pushable blocks, moving platforms, 2D holes, destructible blocks, levers, time zones, traps, enemy spawners, chests, items, decorative field of view, doors to other levels, and much more are at your disposal.

MOBILE FRIENDLY



The TopDown Engine is built to support all devices, whether you're aiming for high end consoles or PC, or mobile phones. The Engine comes bundled with Nice Touch, More Mountains' mobile input solution, usually sold separately. This will allow you to add mobile controls like virtual sticks or buttons extremely easily.

The Engine is well optimized, and built following Unity's good practices. It's lightweight, and doesn't generate garbage, to allow for great performance whatever the device.

Buy the TopDown Engine on the Asset Store right now!

 

And here's a video showcasing some of the features of the engine (more are coming soon!) :

 

congrats on the release... looking very good! Think I put this on my to buy list

 

@spotdot > Thanks a lot!

 

Looks pretty neat, really want to get my hands on it!

Just a question, Will work with procedural assets like Dungeonizer to generate levels?

Thank you.

 

Wow it's looking really great, planning to buy it soon

Do you have a road-map for planned features or they will be demand driven based on community needs?
Can this engine do 3d melee with combos?If possible can you make a showcase video for it.

Thanks.

 

Fantastic Kit, I bought it on the day of release because of the reputation of Corgi as a solid kit! Loads of features and fun to explore the asset!

Question: If I wanted to rotate the camera, (in a 3D scene), how could I modify the character controller to react to input from the camera direction rather than a fixed direction? I plan on using the TopDown style for battles, but walking around the world, I would prefer to use a free camera.

 

Hello, is it difficult to switch the 3d player and npc models? Can you make a video tutorial regarding this? This looks like a awesome AAA Topdown Asset

 

will you add reload routines? The npc firing non-stop?

 

I think there's a rough roadmap of some features on this page, at the end of the release notes:

https://topdown-engine.moremountains.com/topdown-engine-releases

 

Great job, asset looks great as always! Added to the wish list

 

Looks good. How compatible is this system with customer terrain (Gaia for instance), plater models as Devision4 asked, and all-around customization. Thanks

 

@Muppo > I don't know Dungeonizer myself, and just like for the Corgi Engine, I don't plan on supporting any third party asset, but as long as the levels it generates match the engine's specs (proper collider setup, layers, etc) you'll have no problem.
@indie_dev85 > I do have my own roadmap, but like my other assets, this one's roadmap will indeed be community driven. Already received tons of requests There's no example of a 3D combo weapon for now, but there's a 2D one (and a full tutorial for it). It's the exact same process to create a 3D version of it, I don't think duplicating the example is needed
@Vog > It's hard to answer this in a forum post. It's doable, but would require a long answer, and really depends on your exact specs. Basically you'll want to compute the camera's angle and modify the direction sent by the input to the character by rotating it by that angle.
@Devision4 > There's already reload mechanics (and reload actions for AI). As for "how difficult" X is, I don't answer questions like these, it all depends on your skills, not mine. In my opinion it'd be super easy, especially if you take the time to read the documentation which explains all that in great details
@Xain > Thanks!
@digiross > See my first answer, there's no official support for any third party (it's really impossible to maintain for me), but as long as what they produce/generate matches what the engine recommends (for terrain that'd be collider and layer), it should work. As for customization, the engine is built with extension in mind, and just like the Corgi Engine it's created as a foundation, so really it's as simple as it can be. Check the documentation to learn more about all this works!

 

Hey ! First I want to say I truely admire you as a game developer and an asset publisher ! I love how versatile and productive you are. It was a wonderful surprise to see the Top Down Engine on the asset store and I bought it day one ! As the corgi engine, it's a wonderful base to make a game ! Congrats 5/5 without doubt as every single asset you made !

1. Here is a little bug list I found so far :
- The camera isn't following the character prefab that is instanciated when I start the scene (I have to drag and drop it on the camera script in the inspector so the scrolling works)
- You can shoot through walls (if you're close enough to a wall, you can damage enemies or props that are behind).
- Projectile pass through closed doors
- There is some weird collisions issues when a character is pushed by a moving block (So the camera makes really weird moves)

Hope it helps and it will not be too difficult to fix for you

EDIT : sorry for duplicating my mail, was not sure it was sent to you as it doesn't appear in the sent box when done directly from a website. And I wanted to share few thoughts and ideas regarding your tools !
To Answer you, yes I imported it on a blank projects, had no errors, and it looks like it happens on every scene !

2. Also I like the platforming aspect of this Top Down Engine, any plan to add more feature regarding that ?
- Like wall slide, wall jump, ladder abilities as the corgi engine but for this top down engine ? (even if it shouldn't be too difficult to do it by myself as I own both products)
- Throwing objects (weapons ?) with an option to have a notion of "height" or no depending on the kind of game we want to make
I think this kind of "height notion" in top down games is wonderful gameplay-wise ^^

3. And the last idea I had concerns both the Corgi and the TopDown Engine, I tried to do it by myself but it's more complicated than I first thought. A lot of elements of your engines use a MMTool handling "Path Movement". I think it could be great to add more options to this ! Like being able to have more options for each step of the Path.

For example, from point 0 to point 1, I want the object to move with a particular tween '"InOutCircle" at this particular speed or in this particular amount of time (let's say 0 to 1 in 0.3 seconds). From point 1 to 2, I want the movement to be linear and at this different speed or amount of time (1 to 2 in 2 seconds). The path from 0 to 1 and from 1 to 0 could have different values in case of loop mode and you could choose a duration instead of speed for every path. (I know this is pretty complex but it would deeply enhance the amout of possibilities of your system I think as most of the game I love have this kind of patterns for obstacles and ennemies !)

4. Finally for me the only real problem I have with your engines, but I think it might be difficult for you to fix is that If you want to use and implement your own input logic (Let's say I want to use Lean Touch from the Asset Store for touch input - based on tap/swipe/holding touch instead of the virtual tactile controller included with your engines, which is not the best way to handle input in mobile games - even if it's of course more convenient for multiplatform games), you have to modify a lot of scripts of your engines. It's not a real issue but I had to do it on my projects so each enhancement you make I need to update the engine by hand ^^ (I know this is not recommended when using all in one engine but I have no other choice)

 

@Rictus25 > Thanks for reporting these, no need to duplicate everything here, I got your email and answered it already. As I said, I'll need more info to reproduce these, as they've never been reported and I don't know what scene you're talking about

 

Wanted to pop by and tell you congrats on the release and that it looks phenomenal! The 2D stuff in the trailer looks like an Enter The Gungeon DLC or something. Top notch!

 

@LaneFox > That's a very nice thing to say, thanks!

 

i need this type of game, its one of my fav top down games, am i able to achieve this?

 

@lolclol > Well yes, that is a top down game. As for whether or not you'd be able to achieve this, it depends on your skills, not mine, so I can't really answer that for you. I'd suggest you check the documentation and decide for yourself whether it'd be a good fit for your project or not.

 

OMG!! Thank you! I was already creating a top down game but I'm starting over using your engine. As a purchaser of the Corgi engine as well, I know this is worth a lot more than $60 so I'm about to buy this now (well when I get paid). I only have one question, I use Playmaker a lot to handle all my trigger events. Is there something built into this engine that could handle trigger events such as; If enemy sights player, change audio. Or, If player enters this collider, activate this game object? I wouldn't think so but just checking.

 

I couldn't wait, so I just bought it. I'll buy the baby food next week.

 

That's the spirit.

 

I downloaded TopDown Engine from Asset Store and tried the Loft3D Level. Unfortunately the Camera is not working. It does not follow the Player.

 

@unity_EK6zi6qWM54bvg

Try a fresh installation but import the asset inside Unity, not at Project creation. A popup should appear asking you to install extra needed stuff.

 

@DeanMarquette > No, there isn't something like that built-in. Thanks for buying the asset!

@unity_EK6zi6qWM54bvg > As @Muppo said, or as explained on the asset's page, the readme, or the documentation, it unfortunately sometimes happen that Unity doesn't import all packages on install. But as explained in the doc, it's quite easy to fix.
If you've imported the asset in a blank project, the Engine should automatically handle that for you, and install the required dependencies. If despite that, you still get errors mentioning Cinemachine or PostProcessing, or if the camera doesn't follow the player, you can try to go to the Tools Menu at the top of your screen, then More Mountains, then Welcome To The TopDown Engine. That should fix it.

A bit of info about why this may happen : Unity allows (for now) an asset on the Asset Store to upload its Project Settings folder (which includes input, quality, etc), but not the Packages' manifest.json, which describes what packages the asset uses (such as, in this case, PostProcessing and Cincemachine). So the TopDown Engine implements an auto downloader that, once the asset's been imported, runs a check, downloads the packages, and makes sure everything works. Of course, this is not as robust as it could be if it was native to Unity. I'm working with Unity right now to change that, and have a native solution. In the meantime, please try the steps above if you run into issues. (Check out the documentation for more details)

 

I looked through the documentation first but didn't see any mention of it. Wanting to know if you can make a door or chest require more than one key to open?

 

@DeanMarquette > Not by default, no. But someone implemented something similar for the Corgi Engine, and it's available in the extensions repo : https://github.com/reunono/CorgiEng...eratedZoneExtended/KeyOperatedZoneExtended.cs
You should be able to use that as a base, and it may even work out of the box. If it doesn't, that's still a good direction on how to extend the engine to support that.

 

Not exactly out of the box but 99%. Just need a bit of adjustment, tried myself yesterday.
In fact, I want to try several custom things from Corgi Engine in Top Down E. too, as the code looks pretty similar.

 

Engine looks great. Checking out the dox and release notes now.

Any built-in fog-of-war? If not, can I recommend adding it as a layer or maybe an object tied to a door? An option to deactivate AI for enemies inside/under it would be nice as well. Not a high priority....more like "icing on the cake".

 

@Boom_Shaka > Fog of war tied to a door? I'm not sure I follow. Do you have any example of that?

 

Only example I can think of right now is the pixel dungeon games, where you can't see beyond a door until you open it.



I can't confirm the exact game mechanic...my assumption has been a door-based trigger.

 

@Boom_Shaka > Oh ok. The engine already includes line of sights mechanisms. Right now they're used to light up what the player can see as a decoration, but you could do exactly that with this as well.

 

I was missing this feature too on Corgi. Already have a solution but only with sprites, not tilemaps.
Yesterday I revamped the script and now it works with tilemaps on both engines. You can see the Extended Key Operated Zone in this clip too.

It's such a great help for code rookies like me that TopDown is so similar to Corgi inside.

Maybe this can be take as a suggestion for future releases, @reuno?

 

Hi @reuno ,

Awesome engine again, now i gotta work those A.I behaviours. there is a loooooooooooooooooooooooot to play with !

I will add :
-Fear from enemies, so they flee from combat to seek for help

-Maybe a sound system so the faster we move, the noisier(is that even a word ? ) we get

-And a couples of spells.


now, gotta make this work with school, work and my main game developpement. The darkest blob.

 

@MaccyDBoy > These are cool features Have fun with your project!

 

Hey again @reuno , i would like to have your advice on how i want to approach the sound system. Please feel free to tell me if that is not the good place to ask, but considering that it is your engine and you know best than anyone else if it'll work.

I would like to cast raycast around the player in all direction everytime it makes sound and change the raycast lenght according to the ''volume'' of the sound made, for exemple walking.

and i'd make these raycast rebound on walls and IF it hit an ennemy, the ennemy go to the last know position of the player based on the sound.

But, the thing i fear is that it casts TOO much raycasts because of the rebounds.

Here's the mecanic beautifully drawn !

 

@MaccyDBoy > It does seem like a lot of raycasts, but really depending on your target device this may not be a problem. It doesn't seem like anything specific to the engine so I'm not sure I'm the best to answer this I'd say the best way to know if it'd work for you would be to test it

 

I actually love the standard third person controller that Unity comes with. It has very smooth blending movements and is better than a lot of third person controllers in the asset store. I almost got it to work with your engine but there seems to be to many references to other things in the Character script. Any help would be appreciated.

Also I noticed the camera would jerk forward when I was walking around the scene with my character sometimes when I change direction. Any Idea how to smooth the camera movement?

 

Ok I think I got it. The only error I get now is this:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
UnityStandardAssets.Characters.ThirdPerson.ThirdPersonCharacter.CheckGroundStatus () (at Assets/Standard Assets/Characters/ThirdPersonCharacter/Scripts/ThirdPersonCharacter.cs:221)
UnityStandardAssets.Characters.ThirdPerson.ThirdPersonCharacter.Move (Vector3 move, Boolean crouch, Boolean jump) (at Assets/Standard Assets/Characters/ThirdPersonCharacter/Scripts/ThirdPersonCharacter.cs:54)
UnityStandardAssets.Characters.ThirdPerson.ThirdPersonUserControl.FixedUpdate () (at Assets/Standard Assets/Characters/ThirdPersonCharacter/Scripts/ThirdPersonUserControl.cs:71)

 

@DeanMarquette > I'm afraid that out of context these errors don't mean much.
I don't have any specific advice if you want to implement a new controller. The asset includes two different ones, the 2D and 3D version. Both inherit from a core controller, and that's what you'd have to do too if you wanted a third one. So looking at these two would be a good start.
As for camera, it's all handled natively with Cinemachine, so it's really a matter of defining the settings you prefer on the virtual camera.

 

Hi ! I happened to have bought some asset for lightning purpose and one of them offered occlusion.

so i decided to merge the Character sight from topDownEngine From Reuno, and fiddled with the occluder/occluded Material and it turned out like this :

But since i am sooo bad at creating my shaders and light material ( well i mostly just dont know how ) i had to use the ones from 2DDLPro.. turns out it works like a charm !

 

Can you really create a beat em up like streets of rage or final fight in this? Does it support melee combos and throw attacks?

 

@MaccyDBoy > That's really cool, thanks for sharing!
@jaelove > There's no throw attack (that sounds a tad specific) but sure you can create something like Streets of Rage. I'd suggest getting a look at the features list and see if that's a good fit for you.

 

Hi @reuno, thanks for answering this. I had a similar question about a movement controller. I'm working on movement like what's used in Hitman GO or Crossy games, where the agent moves a fixed distance in a direction and then stops until the next input. Comparing the core TopDownController and the 3D controller will help a lot. Thanks for being so thorough with the commenting. I'm not much of a coder, but the commenting makes it less daunting. Would looking at your Infinite Runner Engine controllers help or are they built differently?

 

@greg725 > You won't find a controller similar to Hitman Go in the Infinite Runner Engine, if that's your question. That said the Lane Runner controller in the Inf. Runner Engine does move a fixed distance at every step, so maybe it'll help.

 

Hey @reuno - I have a few questions -

1. How well does top down engine work with the new Unity terrain system in 2018.3?
2. Is there the ability to crouch and go prone?

 

Reuno,

Great engine/ foundation to build on — well done!!! Not only solid examples but very good documentation, clean code, easy to follow.

Looking forward to future updates and other assets you create. Thank you for releasing this to the community.

More out of curiosity, any thoughts/plans about moving towards the Enity Component System (ECS) some time in the future?

 

@HeadClot88 > Haven't tried the new terrain tools, but it should work fine. There's crouch ability, not prone, but it'd be very easy to add starting from the crouch ability.
@coryjo > I'm a huge, huge fan of ECS, and as soon as it's in a production ready state I'll publish something with it. Right now it's a bit too early.

 

Hi any tips how to realize dialogues with the system or any 3rd party system which works with it?
Thanks in advance.

 

@kregenrek > There's no dialogue system in the engine yet, so I guess any 3rd party system would do.
It's high on my todo list though, so it's coming soon.