Angry I bought this and I need help!

[skianslow]

I spent money on a system that said it was "Plug-in-play" ready and that I "wouldn't need to know or use code again." I know I'm a novice here...but since I'm the type of person this system says that it was designed for, I can't help but feel that I was straight up lied to.
Since this isn't Plug-in-Play as advertised, I started to look for tutorials. Every tutorial I can find is either inapplicable physics and coding challenges, or starting partially through a project and wanting me to pay for their packages...to use on a package that I paid for...
Could someone kindly point me in the direction of a 3rd person tutorial that isn't trying to sell me something. I'd like a climbing, combat, and stealth system as well as A.I. Hopefully, this can still work out to be the excellent system all the reviews said it was.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

I think you are aiming to high as a novice, that's all.

 When you start learning a tool, you need to be prepare to not learn what you want to achieve, but instead learn the various technics that you will then apply and mix together to achieve what you want.

PlayMaker is plug and play, you install it and you can straight away start creating interactive content. Maybe you expected that it would be composed of modules such as Climbing, combat or AI? If you want such types of modules, then you'll need to resort to other asset that are specialized for these specific cases.

PlayMaker is a visual coding solution, that is totally generic, and as such you will need to build from scratch your climbing or combat system. And it's totally feasible, BUT it means you need to learn the tool first Indeed the reviews is a good indicator, so don't give up, you just need to be patient and accept that there is a learning process to undertake to achieve anything other than "hello world" type of scene.

There are tons of PlayMaker tutorials involving Physics online, dismissing them all is not constructive, and I strongly suggest you keep looking and investigate yourself how it works. Can you point to the tutorials that you went through?

So, I suggest we cut down all your requests and take them one by one, step by step. ok?

--- Climbing.

- What is your character rig, is it 2d, 2.5d, 3d?
- I take it's physics based, are you using a character controller with it?
- What are your climbing object, is it a ladder, a cliff, some platform?
- What's your knowledge of Rigidbodies, colliders and triggers? do you understand these concepts?


---- combat is a very advanced topic, can you tell more about what you expect, or maybe link to a game with a similar gameplay as what you want to achieve?


---- Stealth system. Can you describe more as well?

---- AI. AI is a too wide concept to give an answer on this, you need to define exactly what you mean by AI, do you want npc ( Non Player Character) to seek player(s) and shoot, do you want something else?

 Bye,

 Jean

[cloudjsh7]

+1 upvote

I'm extremely new at programming also. Playmaker is definitely everything it says it is. But accepting the fact that programming games is more than just "drop ready-made content and voila--works how I want it to" is just the first step.

Playmaker is a tool that does a lot of the back-end scripting for you.
However, you are still in charge of programming your characters to do what you want. Playmaker won't do things automatically for you. Nothing will.
But Playmaker will definitely make it a whole heck-ton easier for you.

Besides--slugging through tutorial after tutorial will only make you better in the long run.

Making games is an art.
And no art was ever learned in a day or two.

YOU CAN DO IT! 

Hi,

I think you are aiming to high as a novice, that's all.

 When you start learning a tool, you need to be prepare to not learn what you want to achieve, but instead learn the various technics that you will then apply and mix together to achieve what you want.

--snip--

[Pyremind]

I just suggested this to someone else with a similar problem, so I hope yall don't think I'm advertising, but this guy:

https://thestrangeschool.vhx.tv/

is great at teaching. I'm in a similar boat, and I found his tutorials to be engaging and thorough. Like 30 bucks too for lots of hours of tuts and assets to start with. Give this a shot instead of searching all over IMO.

[skianslow]

I would like to thank you all for the quick replies. I sent this comment after a couple of wasted days looking for the means to understand this system. All I found were people trying to charge for premade work, or simple physics systems that wouldn't apply to what I was trying to do. With something that is called Plug-in-Play, I had expectations of something like a beefed-up version of the character prefabs in the standard assets. Perhaps even simple spot and chase enemy A.I. some simple attacks and N.P.C's with dialog boxes that were ready to go and a handful of basic expressions.
I'm not looking to pay for classes on understanding and applying a package that I already spent money on. I found plenty of those during that frustrating time as well...but I do honestly appreciate the thought of guiding me towards a direction you've found helpful. To that user, I say thanks.
It's clear to say that this might be a helpful package once I understand it...but is far from what I had perceived from the advertisements. Plug-in-Play means that the user has an immediate understanding of the product straight out of the digital box. It does not mean that the product can be downloaded and applied. If that were the case then everything in the asset store would be "Plug-in-Play" and it would make the need to mention it redundant.

[jeanfabre]

Hi,

 Not everything is plug and play by far on the asset store, this is a misconception I am afraid, but I think we all get your point of course.

 All advertising plugins, in app purchase, all the thing that deals with server side, all the mecanim type of animation framework, are not plug and play, extra work is needed in order to get to a point where that particular asset will perform, this is not the case with PlayMaker, PlayMaker is operational as soon as you installed it on your project, as such it completely validates being labeled plug and play.

 What your vision of plug an play is tends to be assets that propose a solution for a given gameplay, like an FPS or a racing game, theses assets gives you easy access to a very specific type of gameplay. PlayMaker is not constraining you to a particular type of game, and as such it means you need to build your gameplay and features from scratch. I think this is the confusion with the term "plug and play".

If PlayMaker was "Plug and Play" in these terms, what game type and features would you like to see? We all understand it's impossible to cover all types ( even Unity tried and quickly deprecated its attempt to provide ready made projects for certain types of games, hence why the Asset store is filled with hundreds of solutions.

Also, it is clear from my experience, that the best way to work with Unity is to embrace the Asset store and what it has to offer, 99% of the assets have a very, very low cost, and give you a tremendous push in the direction you want to go by having spend hours, days, weeks, years to come to the best possible way to deal with a specific feature or gameplay. It has to be regarded as a way to save money, not a way to make you buy more things or trick you. ALWAYS read the reviews, they are very informative and very likely true about a given asset.

 An asset like Playmaker is sometime seen as expensive, but for an artists that has no clue what c# is, it makes all the difference, to the extent that even some artist got a job at Unity headquarters because they could show off their artists skills because they could produce the interactive aspect of their art themselves, It's too bad I did not ask for the card of this guy that approached me at Unite Austin, he basically came to the booth to tell us about this story ( so if you read this, get back to me please ). Makes all the effort of all these years worth it, with only just this feedback really. How do you price that then on the Asset Store for what it really worth?

 Doing a stealth mode or combat takes days, weeks, likely month to get right. So, is it not desirable to find a ready made system for a few bucks that will save you hundreds of hours/bucks down the road?

for example: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/packs/stealth-action-game-kit-32535

 if you are into making a stealth game, this kind of asset should be very attractive to you, you might not use it in the end, but you can inspire from it, looking at how problems where solved, etc etc. I do that a lot myself, getting an asset to learn something. I also learn so much from the Unity learn assets, the last few are incredible, and yes they might not be what you are after, but they sure give you a lot to learn and digest for later on in our own projects.


So, make sure you create new thread on your questions as you'll learn PlayMaker, and ping me so that I don't miss your post

Bye,

 Jean