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Interested in AC, few question though

Hello.

I'm interested in Adventure Creator, but I have few questions before I will decide what to buy.

Posted this on Unity forum, before I found this forum:

"I apologize for the beginner question, but what is the difference between Adventure Creator and First Person Exploration Kit or Horror Development Kit or other like First Person Adventure, beside the first person interactions and price?

Second: Does Adventure Creator has a Load/Save included? "


I tried the demos and I had seen a load / save but I don't know how it was created. Also, what about GUI?

Comments

  • edited April 2017
    First AC can be used to create any kind of Adventure Game (First person, third person, point and click, direct control, 3D, 2D, etc).

    Most important, AC has it's own visual scripting (based on predefined actions, ie: play animation, Open UI, Close UI, save game, load saved game, change save profile, play sound, play music, mote to, follow path, etc, etc, etc). This is indeed one of the biggest pluses in AC. Because it means you can create any logic you want even if you don't know any programming. (On the other hand, the other assets you mentioned are locked to what features they give you). AC also has a very wide range of predefined actions so you can do a lot (and can even do your own custom actions if you are a programmer). It also allows you to create global and local variables in an editor which you can use in your logic. 

    AC then has a ton of standard features for most adventure games (a dialogue system, camera systems, Hotspots systems, etc) all stuff you can control using said Visual scripting editor.

    AC has two ways to deal with UI, you can create menus using the easy to use AC menu system (which allows you to create UI live, create elements, resize,etc) or you can just tell AC what UI elements a menu is going to have and then link those elements to actual UGUI. That way AC will drive the UGUI (depending on the "actions" you use, it will enable the UI or disable them accordingly, move them, display text on them, etc). 

    AC has a complete save system, pretty easy to use from the said visual scripting editor. All global variables you create will be remembered in saved games by AC.

    Programmer or non-programmer, AC is one of the best Game Frameworks I've ever seen. You can use it "as is" to make any kinda of Adventure game, or with enough programming knowledge, you can build on top of it to create whatever kind of single player game you may want to create (my case, I love hybrid games, like Adventure game with RPG elements, etc).

    AC does aim a lot at Classic style adventure games, or what I'd call non-fighting oriented games. So if you want games where you have to battle, you'd have to either drop in some extra plugins or use the visual scripting editor to create things like like health bars and things like that. Thankfully AC is made to be plug in with other assets well (or your custom stuff), and it already has an integration with a ton of the best assets out there (so if you already have a plugin like UFPS, you'll be able to use it in conjuction with AC) 
  • Welcome to the forum @ocimpean.  Also be aware that you can view AC's Manual online before purchase, and also check out the video tutorials aimed at taking you through the main concepts.  If you're interested in first-person games in particular, I would suggest watching the first-person tutorial beforehand to see what AC provides.

    A rundown of the save/load system is covered in Section 9 of the Manual, but essentially it comes down to attaching components to GameObjects whose data you wish to save - ie. the "Remember Transform" component to an object that changes position.  Things that AC knows must be saved (variables, inventory, player position) are handled automatically.
  • Alverik  thanks for detailed answer.

    ChrisIceBox /; thanks for the manual link, will be checking it out.

  • Your video tutorials are very informative. I watched the 2d and 3d one and was impressed with the effort, time and dedication you put into creating those.

    I notice that Dialogue System and Playmaker integration is mentioned. Can you point me to any video tutorials?

    Does Narrative Console https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/34906 work with AC?




  • edited April 2017
    Don't know much about playmaker, but I know there are special actions to call playmaker statemachines and features, and playmaker also has actions to controls some AC features(or action lists). For the Dialogue System here is its AC integration page from their manual. And here's pixel crushers own video tutorial on the AC integration:

  • There isn't any official integration between Narrative Console and AC, but the focus these days is on empowering users to write their own, tailored integration anyway (see the scripting guide).

    While I haven't been through it myself, I imagine you could use AC's Menu Manager (linked to a Unity UI) for turning on/off the UI only - with the content of the UI controlled entirely by the other asset.  A custom Action could be written to update the UI - see this tutorial.  With custom Actions and events, it becomes much more possible to use AC with other assets in the way that makes sense for your own game.
  • I think I will have to minimize the complexity at least in the beginning so I will use Adventure Creator standalone after I will buy it, and if need arises will ask around for paid/unpaid help for other integration.
  • I am interested in buying AC too and dont want to create another thread. So, if i can, i will ask here. I would like to start working (as hobby) on adventure game with player movement limited only to x axis. movement should be still controlled by mouse click. Im often planning to use animated loops (250 frames aprox.) as background and foreground. Im scared of complexity of Unity, i dont want to code, i prefere to focus on gameplay, visuals and animations. Im hoping that AC should be for me, but before i buy, i have made small video of expected gameplay and scene visuals and would like to know, if this is the right soft for me. I dont have much money, so wrong choice will be sad for my wallet. here is the link:

    background is animated loop, foreground too. player is positioned between foreground and background. movement only in x, but with comfort space around that line for clicking with mouse. Is AC able to smoothly play those kind of loops, is movement in x possible without complicated scripting (i have read forums and it seems, that yes) and is this soft good choice for total unity amateur as me? Thank you in andvance for your help and opinions. Patrik

  • Welcome to the community, @passpatrik.

    First of all, know that we can discuss a refund if you later find that AC isn't right for you.

    As for x-only movement, there's a couple of ways you can do it:

    1. You can just make a very thin NavMesh, so that while he technically can move up/down as well, he just can't move very noticeably so. You can limit animation to only left/right sides as well
    2. You can use a script to only instruct the player to move along the X-axis. Such a script is available on the AC wiki here.

    With regards to the looping animations, AC wouldn't actually handle this since it still relies on Unity for animation playback - but Unity certainly can do this. AC can be used to start/stop animation playback, but animation that loops for the whole scene's duration probably wouldn't need this.

    If you're unsure about this, I would recommend getting the foreground/background loop animations working in Unity before concerning yourself with AC. While AC does aim to be accessible to Unity users of all experience levels, it is recommended to have working knowledge of its interface and animation in particular. AC's 2D tutorial video is the one most friendly towards newcomers.

  • Hello Chris,
    thank you for your welcome and your quick and explanatory reply, plus generous possibility of refund. I will dig info about animation loops in unity and i hope i will be able to understand them, because im looking forward to start putting assets together and making them alive in your plug=in.Best wishes and thank you again. Patrik

  • Good day,
    i have purchased AC and my work on assets is already slowing down, because im not painting, but trying to figure out what else i need to learn. Now I know how to create animation loops and animations in unity, but the AC is still quite complicated because im not familiar with Unity basics. I hope that my panic will slowly wear down. I would like to ask you, if you are considering to add rotation animation and limitation of movement to only x axis as AC features. I understand that it is possible to achieve that through coding in Unity itself, but it would be great to simple check that option in the AC menu, especially for beginners like me. I believe that rotation animation will improve the feeling from animation greatly and that it is not just some minor gimmick. Finaly, thank you for your program. I wouldnt have chance without him, trying to bring to life my game only in Unity.

  • edited August 2019

    I've described above two ways to limit movement to only the x-axis. There's no "set way", however, because the needs of each project differ. If your game relies on Direct movement, you can also add a Rigidbody 2D component and freeze the position in the Y axis.

    What rotation animation are you specifically referring to? Please post screenshots for such a visual issue.

    In a 2D game, your character's "sprite child" can be animated however you wish - including being given rotation. If you're trying to animate a character's Z rotation on a loop, doing so in each animation (e.g. idle, walk) would cause jerky motion as they transition from one to another. Better to instead perform the rotation as a separate animation in a sub-layer of your Animator, so that it plays alongside any standard character animation.

  • edited August 2019

    Sorry, if im asking stupid questions. I know that you described possibilities to limit movement to one axis above. By rotation animation i mean animated frames between rotation (flip) from one facing side to another:
    https://giphy.com/gifs/XBoAmkaxwh9nVbvn9z

  • Ah, thanks for clarifying.

    For turning animations in 2D, you'll have to rely on the "Sprites Unity Complex" animation engine. This takes a little more work to set up than the "Sprites Unity" engine, which is the default for 2D, because it relies on using Animator parameters to determine what animation gets played - as opposed to a naming convention e.g. "Idle_R" for right-facing idle.

    With "Sprites Unity Complex" animation, you define parameters in your Animator Controller that AC sets automatically. For example, the "Move speed float" parameter is set to the character's movement speed, and the "Body facing angle" is mapped to the angle they are facing. You then use these to create transitions between your various animations (e.g. Idle_R transitions to Walk_R if the "Move speed float" becomes positive.

    This is more in line with the standard way of working with animations in Unity, so if this is new to you I would recommend just getting the idle and walk animations set up using this animation engine. When you're ready to implement turning animations, you can do so by creating transitions between your left and right animations when the angle changes, or the turn speed becomes non-zero.

    See the Manual's "Character animation (Sprites Unity Complex)" chapter for full details on this mode. A variant of the 2D Demo's player character which uses this mode can also be found in the 2D Demo's Resources folder.

    If you need further help with getting such an animation implemented, please create a new post in Technical Q&A with details on what you've achieved so far.

  • Thank you Chris, youre right. it would be better to stick to simple sprites unity complex for now, because AC alone is still pretty comnplicated for me. But now at least i know how to limit player movement to one axis and how to create and play animations:

    Now im trying to figure out how to create and chain scenes together and to be able navigate in AC folder hierarchy. But i will try to not bother you and other users here too much.

  • Once you add a scene to Unity's Build Settings, you can switch to it at runtime using AC's Scene: Switch Action.

    As for AC's folder hierarchy: be aware that it's optional. Some users find that it helps keep things organised, but clicking "Without folders" in the Scene Manager when creating a new scene does without them.

  • passpatrick - this tutorial helped me LOTS when I started with AC. Just follow what the guy is doing:

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