Hello! (and some newbie questions)

oxyscythe

Hi all, just joined the community of this awesome asset so I thought I'd say hi!

Also had a few questions (which I sent by email to Chris before I realised there's forums so I thought I'd better re-ask them here so others can also benefit from the answers). I've watched all the old tutorials and read the new ones, but these things still elude me.

Here goes!

- How do I enable the interaction mode that's similar to the 2d Demo and works well for WebPlayer in terms of how the mouse behaves (i.e. no need for right click, left click brings up the interaction options). I tried the different interaction modes in the Settings Manager but none other than "Context Sensitive" seem to work for me, and Context Sensitive needs both mouse buttons

- How do you do different screens and transition between them? Will they basically need to be different unity scenes? And do Variables persist across screens? E.g. say I have a “Forest” scene and a “Cabin” scene and there’s a Woodchuck character who won’t have a certain dialogue option activated, until I have a certain item in my inventory. If I have something like “HasAxeInInventory” bool variable in my Variables manager, will that be queriable from any scene in the game?

- How easy is it to customise the UI and have you got any pointers on that? Right now I am using the UI that comes with Adventure Creator but if there’s time I’d like to customise it a bit at some point down the line. I tend to use NGUI in other projects although I wanted to give this new Unity UI a shot. I noticed somewhere adding Unity UI support is in the pipeline? Is it in already? If not any idea when it might be coming?

- Similar question for audio: is it easy to bypass Adventure Creator’s default audio setup and use something like FMOD instead? (my audio guy wants to use FMOD)

- In the game I need to have a number of minigames that are basically completely different gameplay than the main game (think things like a sidescrolling platformer or shoot em up etc.). How would you recommend going about implementing these? Would you implement them in their own scenes and then load these scenes from the corresponding interaction in the main game? I noticed in the documentation somewhere that there’s a Kickstarter component that you can use to turn AC on and off would that come into play as well at all?

Many thanks in advance and looking forward to getting down and dirty with AC in the coming weeks/months!

ChrisIceBox

Hi, @oxyscythe, and welcome!

How do I enable the interaction mode that's similar to the 2d Demo and works well for WebPlayer in terms of how the mouse behaves (i.e. no need for right click, left click brings up the interaction options). I tried the different interaction modes in the Settings Manager but none other than "Context Sensitive" seem to work for me, and Context Sensitive needs both mouse buttons

First of all, it's worth pointing out that you can still disable Unity's right-click-menu in the WebPlayer, following this guide.  As for the 2D Demo's interface, it uses Choose Hotspot Then Interaction mode, and involves clicking on a Hotspot, followed by clicking on an Interaction icon within a Menu.  So, you'll need to make sure you've defined the various icons, and that you've got a menu that'll display them.

You can set up your icons within the Cursor Manager, then add an interaction menu in the Menu Manager.  Don't forget that you can always copy the menus used by the demo games - they're already set up with a basic Interaction menu, that you can use as the basis for your own.  Just click on the Asset file field at the top, and choose Demo_MenuManager to bring up the demo game managers.  From there, you can select the "Interaction" menu, copy it, then paste it inside your own.

How do you do different screens and transition between them? Will they basically need to be different unity scenes? And do Variables persist across screens? E.g. say I have a “Forest” scene and a “Cabin” scene and there’s a Woodchuck character who won’t have a certain dialogue option activated, until I have a certain item in my inventory. If I have something like “HasAxeInInventory” bool variable in my Variables manager, will that be queriable from any scene in the game?

Generally, you'll want each screen to be in a different scene - especially in 2D games.  Variables come in two varieties: Global and Local.  Global Variables will be accessible for reading/writing across all scenes, while Local only exist in the scene in which they're created (though are still "remembered" for the next time you visit them).  While your "HasAxeInInventory" bool should be a Global in this case, it's worth noting that you can also use the Inventory: Check Action to query the same thing.

How easy is it to customise the UI and have you got any pointers on that? Right now I am using the UI that comes with Adventure Creator but if there’s time I’d like to customise it a bit at some point down the line. I tend to use NGUI in other projects although I wanted to give this new Unity UI a shot. I noticed somewhere adding Unity UI support is in the pipeline? Is it in already? If not any idea when it might be coming?

There's no release date for support for Unity's new UI, just as there's no release date from Unity.  However, it's still simple to re-style the UI - just edit the settings within the Menu Manager, and make sure you've got your Game Window active so that you can view the changes.  These tutorials will give give a good introduction.

Similar question for audio: is it easy to bypass Adventure Creator’s default audio setup and use something like FMOD instead? (my audio guy wants to use FMOD)

AC will only play the sounds that you give it, so you're free to use your own system instead.  You'll need to write a custom Action so that you can call FMOD within Cutscenes and the like - custom Actions are covered in this tutorial.

In the game I need to have a number of minigames that are basically completely different gameplay than the main game (think things like a sidescrolling platformer or shoot em up etc.). How would you recommend going about implementing these? Would you implement them in their own scenes and then load these scenes from the corresponding interaction in the main game? I noticed in the documentation somewhere that there’s a Kickstarter component that you can use to turn AC on and off would that come into play as well at all?

The Engine: Manage systems Action allows you to selectively disable each of AC's systems, from movement and interactions to the UI.  You'd be better off just disabling what you don't need, and re-enabling them later.  You can re-enable them by calling a Cutscene that does so, by using a custom script to call it's "Interact" function.  You can also use PlayMaker's "Send message" feature, if you're using the PlayMaker asset.

oxyscythe

Awesome, just found the time to go over this super useful post and read up on everything. Thanks a lot Chris that was really helpful!