Comments

• hightreason

  April 2017 edited April 2017

  Well, I guess the short answer to your question is that you can do pretty much anything with AC because AC runs in Unity and can be extended via custom interactions and events.
  
  If the question is whether AC is the right tool for this job... probably not I would think. But... if the question is whether it is possible using only AC, no other plugins, and no scripting at all... yeah it kind of probably is.
  
  One way to do this that just pops into my head is to put hotspots where you want items to be able to be placed. Then players can use inventory items on the hotspots which would run an action list that teleports an object that was hidden somewhere else onto a marker at the spot. I don't know if it is possible to instantiate objects in AC without a custom interaction, but it is certainly possible to move them into place if you have them stored somewhere else in the scene. Texture/material swaps I do not think are possible in AC without custom coding.
  
• Technocrat

  April 2017

  You can change textures using the ActionList (Object > Change Material), so that might cover what you're thinking of. I think you could probably do the dragging if you had "Drag and Drop Inventory" ticked in the settings menu, but I couldn't tell you how well that'd work with touch.
• hightreason

  April 2017

  Yes, technocrat is right. It is possible to change materials via an action, my mistake
  
• ChrisIceBox

  April 2017

  Yes - if you were to do this in AC, relying on inventory items and "using" them on Hotspots in your scene would be the best way to go.  Drag-and-drop inventory works fine on mobile, and you have a number of Actions that can achieve the showing of decoration options in your scene:
  
  Object: Change material (to change an object's material)
  Object: Visibility (to show/hide a static object)
  Object: Add or remove (to instantiate an object into the scene)
  Object: Teleport (to move an object into view)
  
  As for changing the input method, that can be done at any time from the Settings Manager.  Your pre-existing logic, Hotspots etc will still work regardless of the change - though you may want to design your UI differently (larger buttons on mobile, etc).
  
• blogsabout

  April 2017

  Thank you so much guys for the very helpful and detailed explanations.

  
  

  I'm a little wiser
  
  

  I have been using Playmaker and thought I wanted to use that at first, but I would need the lovely "adventure" features, such as the camera, player controls, input etc.
  Would it make it make sense to run this in Playmaker? I like to be able to change add things along the way, so my thought was to have AC with Playmaker - is that performing ok on Mobile?
  
  Say if I didn't use the "drag and drop" but instead had an item in my scene - and in the inventory have a number of "sub items" that the player can choose from - can that item be swapped with the one selected?

  And can I do tapped inventories? Ie "CategoryX" with itemsX, Y Z?
  
  Great to hear its just a matter of changing the settings in regards to controls!

  Sounds absolutely awesome!

  
  

  Have an awesome day!

  Cheers 

  Dan
• ChrisIceBox

  April 2017

  I can't speak for PlayMaker's performance on mobile, but AC has a section in the Manual dedicated to optimisation - see Section 13.6.
  
  AC also has an Action that can be used to run PlayMaker FSMs - you can use this to call PM functions as part of AC's Cutsenes, Interactions etc - but AC is designed to be a "top-level" plugin, so you'll have better results doing it that way around rather than having PM call AC functions instead.
  
  AC does support inventory categories, but this is limited to an item's inclusion in a given Inventory menu.  If you wanted a different set of inventory items to appear when clicking an object in your scene, you'd either have to create, then show, a different Inventory menu for that set of items (and categorise each item as such), or simply give the player all the relevant items at that moment (and then take them away again afterwards).
  
• blogsabout

  April 2017

  Thanks a lot for elaborating!
  
  Would I be able to simply 'tap' an icon in the inventory and then have it 'visible' in the scene?
  The idea is to have a decoration feature.
  Say I have 5 different tables. There will be a default in the scene.
  In inventory when an icon is changed the deafault will be hidden and
  The tapped on will appear(so no drag and dropping, but instant 'swapping')
  And have some of the items in the inventory 'unlock' over time?
  The category concept was meant to solve, say I want chairs too - its not being accessed by clicking
  The scene, but a 'tap'.
  Maybe it can be solved eaier by having 'bottons' for each category, and then open a whole new
  Inventory for that ? That would mean the 'category' would be nessecary I guess
  (But the player will experience it is categories) - and the having fun effects fired off during the 'swapping'
  
  So it would make sense to give the player the items (and not take them
  Away, since its simply 'swapping')
  
  I love the camera feature in AC, QTE etc so it would be awesome if the 'core'(decoration)
  Can be done, mixed with the adventure elements
  
  Happy Easter everyone!
  Cheers Dan
• ChrisIceBox

  May 2017

  Inventory items don't have to be used directly on Hotspots - you can still define "Use interactions" for them in the Inventory Manager that run when clicked/tapped on.
  
  Assuming your game's Interaction method is set to Context Sensitive, then defining an inventory item's "Use" interaction will cause the default behaviour (i.e. click/tap to select/drag) to be overridden.  The included 2D Demo makes use of this technique to limit inventory interactions on Hotspots to the Interaction menu, leaving the Inventory menu for inventory descriptions only.
  
  As part of an item's "use interaction", you can incorporate Object: Set visibility Actions to show models / sprites within the scene that were previously hidden.  When an ActionList asset references a scene object, it automatically generates a Constant ID component on that object so that it can find it after reloading the scene.  If you want this all to work in multiple scenes, you can do so by making sure that the Constant ID numbers are consistent between the scenes.
  
  For exampe, if clicking an item shows a sprite with ID = 243 in Scene A, then the associated sprite in Scene B must also have an ID of 243.  Though ID numbers are generated automatically, you can manually assign an ID number from the Constant ID component.  More on Constant IDs can be found from these tutorials.