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Version 1.29 - Node editor, Widescreen support, Scene settings Action

edited April 2014 in Official news
As if by magic.. an update appeared.  Key features this time:

Node-based ActionList Editor.  This replaces the old editor window, but not the Inspector.  It makes it MUCH easier to re-arrange and understand complex ActionLists, and I hope is intuitive enough to understand.  Look here for a demonstration video.

Widescreen support.  Also Letterboxing. Inside the Settings Manager, you can optionally set your game's aspect ratio, and black borders will appear either horizontally or vertically if the screen's AR is any different.  Menus and Cursors are also prevented from entering these borders.

Engine: Change scene settings Action.  This replaces the Engine: Change NavMesh Action (don't worry, it's converted automatically).  As well as being able to change the NavMesh, you can use this Action to also change the Default PlayerStart, Sorting Map, and Cutscene On Load/Start.  To preserve these changes across save games, just attach a ConstantID script to the changed objects.

Unity Sprites Complex animation engine.  I actually don't recommend this being used unless you have very specific animation needs, as it makes the process of creating 2D characters much more laborious.  Much like the Mecanim integration, this engine basically requires you to design your own FSM, and AC will adjust a few Mecanim parameters when appropriate.  As well as the usual "Move speed" float etc, this engine also drives a "Direction" integer, which can be used by your FSM to play different animations based on facing direction.  This way you can have very specific transitions, such as Broken Sword-style "Walk Left -> Walk Down" smooth transitions.

And many more updates/fixes besides.  Full changelog:
  • Added: Node-based ActionList Editor window - Actions can be re-arranged and connected via sockets
  • Added: Widescreen support - set your game's aspect ratio in the Settings Manager
  • Added: "Engine: Change scene setting" Action - replaces "Engine: Change NavMesh", use to change default settings
  • Added: New animation engine: Unity Sprites Complex - provides complete control over sprite-based Mecanim FSMs
  • Added: Option to retain a GameObject's ConstantID number when used as a prefab
  • Added: Option to manually set a GameObject's ConstantID number
  • Added: Music can now play across scenes - follow instructions in the Inspector for Sound objects
  • Added: New animation engine: Unity Sprites Complex - provides complete control over sprite-based Mecanim FSMs
  • Added: Ability to treat carriage returns in Play speech Action as separate speech lines - enable in the Speech Manager
  • Added: Ability to "click to complete" scrolling speech text before manually skipping it - find in the Speech Manager
  • Added: Ability to set per-Character speech text colour - enable in the Dialogue Line label Inspector
  • Added: Ability to disable automatic height-adjustment for Dialogue Line labels set to Manual size
  • Added: Ability to cancel Interaction menus by clicking off them for Choose Hotspot Then Interaction mode
  • Added: Field for optional "Walk" cursor in Cursor Manager
  • Added: Saved game "Time display" setting to Settings Manager - use to display date, date and time, or neither in save lists
  • Added: Ability to filter declared Inventory Items by name
  • Added: Option for FollowSortingMap script to affect child renderers
  • Added: Ability to set a separate directory for custom Actions within Actions Manager
  • Added: Ability to define "Unhandled" interactions for individual Inventory Items
  • Added: Ability to disable need to double-tap to interact with Hotspots when using Touch Screen input
  • Added: Ability to save and load visibility data of child GameObjects with Remember Visibility component
  • Added: Option to disable active Inventory cursor with a left-click - find in Settings Manager
  • Fixed: Actions can now "skip" to ones that precede them in the ActionList
  • Fixed: Changing an Action's type losing it's "After running" settings
  • Fixed: 3D Players with "Tank controls" will animate backwards when moving back (in Mecanim, Move float is reversed)
  • Fixed: Touch-screen devices taking the average position when multiple taps are detected
  • Fixed Player still moving after changing scene due to a Trigger
  • Fixed: Problems with playing lengthy Character walk and run footstep sounds
  • Fixed: Action running a new Cutscene after finishing, if it was set to "Run cutscene" but then changed to something else
  • Fixed: Player not moving if clicking on a Hotspot while in Choose Interaction Then Hotspot's "walk" mode
  • Fixed: Sprite-based Characters frame-flipping even if setting is not currently available
  • Fixed: Automatically-set ConstantID numbers being negative
  • Fixed: Interaction menus not always appearing in correct position

Comments

  • Coooool! I tryed quickly and make a fast build, it's all ooook! ^_^
    I like the new "click to complete scrolling speech text", very pro!
    Late i'll check others new feature, but this update rocks!!! 
    \m/
  • edited April 2014
    Chriiiiiis! Great update, I especially dig the carriage returns and the music continuation, and the node-based editor is delicious. Solid work :)

    I was a little confused by the aspect ratio value as I tend to think in 4:3 and 16:9, not in 1.5 and 1.77; Maybe it would be easier to make that a dropdown?

    One question: how would you advise I do the frame-flipping now that the multiple directions checkmark properly disables it? Should I seperate the walk anim out into two clips and flip the frames in there?
  • @hedgefield: Sorry, you'll have to fill me in again on this problem.  Could you start a new thread about it in the Tech forum?
  • Awesome, the actionlist editor looks fantastic, as do many of the other features! 

    A couple quick notes though:

    1- I can't seem to find a way to set up the unhandled interactions for individual inventory items, at least in the AC GUI. It looks like a script with the functions is being called to look for the unhandled interaction, but I don't see a way to define one for each particular item.

    2- This may warrant it's own topic, but for now: I have an inventory menu set up that appears in the center of the screen when turned on, and when selecting inventory items, I must first click the inventory item, then a back button to turn off the menu. So this would work fine for my purposes, but now it seems that when I click the back button after the inventory item has been selected, the cursor often completely vanishes. I must then right click to get my walk cursor to reappear. Any idea what might be causing this? (Just FYI, the menu is set so that gameplay is not paused when it is shown, and ideally, I'd like to be able to get a menu up which does pause gameplay AND allows the cursor to change to the inventory cursor being selected, which is apparently not currently possible)


  • Such a great update! Thanks Chris :)  I was just wading through a huge ActionList yesterday and yearning for the node editor. It'll really help, as even simple logic with multiple objects can turn into 20 or more actions.
  • Amazing update, thanks! Is the updated manual on its way too?
  • edited April 2014
    @ChrisIceBox Oh sure ofcourse yeah, I've appended it to the original bug report thread.
  • @skitt2051: Per-inventory unhandled interactions are found within the GUI for each Inventory item, underneath their regular interaction fields.  Note that they aren't available for Choose Hotspot Then Interaction Mode when Inventory interactions is set to "Multiple", since this combo has no need for unhandled interactions anyway.  Please put your other issues in a separate thread - it's much easier for me to see to, that way.

    @Guran: The manual was updated as usual - I just forgot to change the version number on the front ;)
  • edited April 2014
    Oh, I see- I did not realize I had even set the inventory interaction to multiple. Thanks, that makes sense I guess. 

    I notice though that the unhandled interaction is called when the item is used on a hotspot AND when it is combined with another item. Why is there one interaction called for both? I'm trying to set up some items which can be thrown or cast towards any hotspot, so I want to use the unhandled hotspot interaction to set that up for every hotspot, rather than do it separately for each one. But when I use this unhandled interaction, it will also be called when I try combining the inventory item. Can they be separated into two discrete unhandled interactions?

    Or is there some way of setting up both within a single actionlist? I'm trying to think of ways to do that- something like a menu: check state action would let me branch that one interaction into two- one for normal gameplay and one for when the inventory is open. I guess I can write that action myself, but is there any other way you had in mind when you added this feature?

    Thanks, and I'll start another thread to detail my other issue.

    Edit: Just for the record, why is the unhandled interaction not available for multiple interactions? I just realized that the format of my game relies on the multiple interactions setting. Is there no way to add an unhandled interaction as one of the multiple interactions to choose from, especially a hotspot based one?
  • Well, normally it is available for multiple inventory interactions - but with Choose Hotspot Then Interaction Mode, you first click the Inventory item - THEN the item you want to combine.  Since you're only given a list of items that have defined interactions, it shouldn't actually be possible to call an unhandled event between two items - am I missing something?
  • For the record, I'm using choose interaction then hotspot mode. So I click the inventory icon to select it then click that cursor onto another icon to combine. This is when the standard unhandled interaction is run, in multiple interaction mode. 


  • For some reason I can't seem to search the latest Manual.pdf. No matter what text I type, it keeps saying there isn't any such text. so because I wasn't able to properly check the manual, I'll just as here, does the manual include any info on "Disable with left-click"? If not, can anyone please explain what this new inventory setting in Settings manager means? And while we're at it, can anyone shed some light on the purpose of the "Change for inventory" setting in Cursor manager?

    Thanks.
  • @skitt2501 - OK, I'll investigate.  Thought this was already working.

    @danielvierna - "Disable with left-click", under the Inventory settings, allows you to de-select an Inventory cursor with a left-click, when not clicking on a Hotspot.  Though I've found an issue with some modes, which will be fixed in the next update.

    And stupidly, "Change for inventory" doesn't do anything!  And worse, I can't remember for the life of me what it was supposed to do.  I'll remove it in 1.30, unless I remember.
  • Hehe. Don’t be too hard on yourself, Chris :)

    It could be due to that issue you found with "Disable with left-click" but in my case, left-clicking always deselects the selected inventory item, no matter what I choose in this setting.

    As for the "Change for inventory" setting, from its name I thought it would either change the cursor to Examine/Use cursors when hovering over inventory items or not (leaving the default cursor in place). When I switched from version 1.27 to 1.29 I noticed the cursor now changes to the Examine cursor when hovering over inventory items and I thought maybe you wanted to add this feature only as an option and added the "Change for inventory" setting to let the user decide whether to activate this new feature or not. Could that be the case?

    And speaking of this new feature, I was wondering why only the Examine cursor is displayed over inventory items but no Use cursor. Is there a way to display the Use cursor as well to let the player know that left-clicking would result in grabbing the item (or some other user-defined usage)? Maybe I should be starting a separate feature request but as we’re already on the subject here, I think it would be great if we could tell each and every inventory item which cursor should be displayed when hovering over it, in much the same way we do so with the "Cursor icon" in a Hotspot’s Use interaction.


  • That's probably what it was for, thanks.  Food for thought on the other stuff, I'll see if it's workable.
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