playMaker

Author Topic: 3rd-person Action game framework!  (Read 22991 times)

parallel

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #15 on: April 13, 2013, 06:27:08 AM »
Got this asset yesterday, was mainly looking for player control and camera setup. To be honest I think this package needs some work in considering the user, here are my first impression crits, Fwiw:

Proper documentation would be nice, easily overviewable and perhaps illustrated pdf form.

Images in asset store are somewhat misleading with the models depicted, as they are not included. Not that I need them, but it sort of leads one to think here is a package with some substatial help scenes included which could aid learning.

Like I said I was mainly looking for a simple player and camera setup, but found the framework appearing to be too dense or integrated to just pick out single elements without studying the whole package and mindset behind it, before being able to extract what I need.

I'll probably return to it later when I have time to study it or need to study particular advanced parts or just simply need it enough, but for now it just seems easier to build the simple stuff I need from the scratch.

Oh and I get a :
_player : Setup and Movement : Weapon Parenting : SetFsmGameObject : Could not find variable: _player
What is this?, I'm using PM 1.5.6 btw


I don't want to discourage people from buying this, as I think these PM frameworks are the way to go. I just think it needs a little work or a clearer description upfront.
« Last Edit: April 13, 2013, 06:29:45 AM by parallel »

Red

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #16 on: April 13, 2013, 12:14:01 PM »
Proper documentation would be nice, easily overviewable and perhaps illustrated pdf form.

I'm at a loss here... given that the pack was rejected before for not having adequate help material, i was under the impression that the 5-6 page text file would have been enough.

Images in asset store are somewhat misleading with the models depicted, as they are not included. Not that I need them, but it sort of leads one to think here is a package with some substatial help scenes included which could aid learning.

I'll update the images to post a disclaimer. that said, always check the pack contents window on the asset store. you can get a preview of a lot of the things in the packages with that window.

Like I said I was mainly looking for a simple player and camera setup, but found the framework appearing to be too dense or integrated to just pick out single elements without studying the whole package and mindset behind it, before being able to extract what I need.

Can't really help with that... it is the way it is because i needed to incorporate a good amount of error catching and redundancy (mainly with the automatic collection of data such as player objects and other gameobject variables which it'd need to function correctly) so as to make this approachable from as many different levels of experience with PM as possible.  as such, i had no other choice but to try and make it as compact as possible. if you pick it apart you can learn from it just make sure you have your own work backed up first because when the pack gets updated with adjustments if need be, updating it will overwrite your own data if you do not make the objects unique themselves. (basically, don't dissect the original pack objects, make clones, make them unique and then work on the unique prefabs. that's one of the tips i mentioned in the second help file as well as mentioned in the help file itself.)

Oh and I get a :
_player : Setup and Movement : Weapon Parenting : SetFsmGameObject : Could not find variable: _player
What is this?, I'm using PM 1.5.6 btw

Yeah, just updated to the most current Playmaker and it's also throwing that error as well for me. (Well, a warning, not an actual "error" error.)

Doing some troubleshooting right now to see why this error is cropping up. since it was not throwing this error with the older version of playmaker, i've got to figure out what differences there are between the two... i suspect it's only with the FSM get/set actions since those are the only ones throwing an error. as it is, however, those are only warnings at this point and as far as i can tell, it's still working... but i'll have to do a thorough check and re-check to see why this is happening (which might be tricky since i have to check it pre-update and post-update for PM.)

As far as i can tell, it seems that the differences is that the actions that are throwing the errors for some reason have changed the naming of the variables between PM installs... So, previous versions it's looking for the "_Player" variable but in the updated one, some of the values are looking for "_player" (the get/set actions are case sensitive... so, this one change is causing problems.)

I'll see about adjusting it...  hopefully it can be resolved soon but I don't know how much of this i'll be disrupting with the changes (often simple issues tend to become larger issues given how closely knit a lot of the actions are.)

parallel

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #17 on: April 13, 2013, 02:57:09 PM »
Proper documentation would be nice, easily overviewable and perhaps illustrated pdf form.

I'm at a loss here... given that the pack was rejected before for not having adequate help material, i was under the impression that the 5-6 page text file would have been enough.

It's not the quantity, but quality; by that I mean, ease of access and readability. A .txt file may still be the standard, but pdf's or wikis with a chaptered order and reference images win in terms of communication. You have lots of chapters (was  missing descriptions of example scenes though), perhaps it's just me being difficult, but when a text file gets longer than a page or two I loose focus. Just a suggestion.

Like I said I was mainly looking for a simple player and camera setup, but found the framework appearing to be too dense or integrated to just pick out single elements without studying the whole package and mindset behind it, before being able to extract what I need.

Can't really help with that... it is the way it is because i needed to incorporate a good amount of error catching and redundancy (mainly with the automatic collection of data such as player objects and other gameobject variables which it'd need to function correctly) so as to make this approachable from as many different levels of experience with PM as possible.  as such, i had no other choice but to try and make it as compact as possible. if you pick it apart you can learn from it just make sure you have your own work backed up first because when the pack gets updated with adjustments if need be, updating it will overwrite your own data if you do not make the objects unique themselves. (basically, don't dissect the original pack objects, make clones, make them unique and then work on the unique prefabs. that's one of the tips i mentioned in the second help file as well as mentioned in the help file itself.)

I understand. A suggestion for the future; as I think there could be demand for it, to make easy and seperately deployable FSM setups (templates) of bread and butter game mechanics.

i suspect it's only with the FSM get/set actions since those are the only ones throwing an error. as it is, however, those are only warnings at this point and as far as i can tell, it's still working... but i'll have to do a thorough check and re-check to see why this is happening (which might be tricky since i have to check it pre-update and post-update for PM.)

Wasn't sure if it made a difference in the example scenes setup. Good to know. Thanks

Red

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #18 on: April 15, 2013, 12:39:35 PM »
Parellel: Aaaah, okay. well, to address that i'm hoping to at some point get some videos recorded on setting it up to go... though i have to actually do that and so far i've been getting more anxious than usual when i set up to record (i have no video editing software so when i record a video i have to do it all in one take... my vids may make it look easy but it's anything but.) as for a pdf, well, i'm going to be honest, i have no idea how to make them nor do i think i have the right software to make one either.

those gameplay ideas i think is a good idea. I've been trying to see about making the system set up so that it can be easy enough but i think having a set of templates or something like that would probably help moreso than anything else. thank you for the suggestion.

and yeah, that error i've been trying to track down... so far i'm still at a loss as to why it's happening but it has made me realize that there might be some hiccups since those actions are meant to tell the stats manager in the weapons what to look for for the monitor... so, it might not be communicating. i'm definately looking into it and hopefully i'll have an update soon but having to juggle between two separate installs (so as to keep the error isolated so i can track it down via comparing the two) is taking more time than it ought to... it'd be nice if i could have two instances of Unity running but each time i've tried it's squaked at me.

Korda

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #19 on: April 15, 2013, 07:35:12 PM »
A pdf is really simple to make. If you have Word download bullzip pdf printer. It works just like a printer but you 'print' to a pdf document. If you have Open Office (an open source equivalent to word) you can save directly to a pdf file.

sefou

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #20 on: April 16, 2013, 02:07:28 AM »
+1 for an simple pdf.

Red

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #21 on: April 16, 2013, 01:55:08 PM »
A pdf is really simple to make. If you have Word download bullzip pdf printer. It works just like a printer but you 'print' to a pdf document. If you have Open Office (an open source equivalent to word) you can save directly to a pdf file.

Aaah, okay... I have open office here but haven't used it since my college days (ahh, papers, essays, memos... fun stuff (not really.))

I've got stuff to take care of but i'll start working on a pdf. i hope it isn't going to present too much of a difficulty but if the consensus is that this ought to be there, i'll see about working towards that for the next update. I can't give a hard date as to when but i'll be sure to make a post about it here and on the Unity forum when it's up. though, that being said, i'm not going to just leave this as the lowest priority (i have a responsibilty to ensure the pack is as good as i can make it.)

zaccom

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #22 on: May 11, 2013, 04:43:34 AM »
Hey Red I need help on making the bullet come from the character. Also the raycast how do I turn it off without mouse pick and us the player direction instead? Also last how would I have my collider deducted from enemy health when push a key to represent a punch kit.

Red

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #23 on: May 14, 2013, 01:11:22 PM »
It would depend on how you're setting up the new gun mechanism.

also, it would need to work with the colliders properly. in the system there, all the colliders are at a height where they will interact with raycasts and such... so, if you've got different colliders that aren't tall enough, you might want to play around with those.

For turning the raycast gun into a projectile gun, it shouldn't be too tough but i'll whip up a screen capture of the states you want to leave alone (if you're going to use the handgun as the template.)

I'll be sure to also add in a section to the help files... since i'm not a seasoned asset-store seller, i am admitting that this is a learning process as well for me to make sure that as many possible issues are addressed.

So, consult the screenshot of the actions highlighted that are unique to the handgun mechanism. as long as the non-highlighted actions are kept, it should still function with the weapon management systems in the package.

to create a projectile handgun instead of a raycasting handgun it should be a matter of making sure that the prefab you're going to use for the bullet to be fired has the right variables set up to pass the damage to the enemies. if you take a look at the landmines, that should give you a point to launch off of in terms of the basic functionality (though i have been contemplating putting up some additional weapon systems for this package... though, that's going to take some time.)

the rest of the functionality for that kind of system would be grab a bullet prefab either from the pool (if you set one up for bullets) "spawn/reposition" it to the firing location (a spawn point would be best in this respect... personally, i'd put that as a child of the weapon system itself by using an empty game object.) then add a force or set the appropriate velocity (both avenues require a rigidbody if i am recalling it correctly) and making sure that the bullet has the right spots in it so that it knows what values to use for damage (if/when it hits an enemy object.)

your question does remind me that i have to get some more comprehensive help files set up... but, i'm going to admit that most of my time lately has been taken up with my main game so please don't think i'm just neglecting the asset pack... but i will set aside some time to ensure that i can flesh out the help files for this.

If this helps or if you need some more help, feel free to keep replying to this thread... if it's okay with you i'd like to bookmark this in the second comment i have here in this thread so that i can collect a bunch of steps and questions so that new forum members can find them easily.

TIGGYsmalls

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #24 on: May 16, 2013, 12:52:30 PM »
Can you please explain how you load the Waypoint container/Waypoints into the Movement FSM?

Red

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #25 on: May 17, 2013, 08:07:43 AM »
How to set up the waypoints is outlined in step 1a of the Basic Enemy v1.1 section of the help file.

so, take waypoint prefab, drop into scene. drag the waypoint manager (the parent of all the waypoints) into the "manager" variable in the inspector. position the waypoints as you wish or add/remove as you need.

TIGGYsmalls

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #26 on: May 17, 2013, 11:52:05 AM »
No, I get that.

I am using Find Game Object to get the Waypoint parent by name.

How do you get the Waypoints loaded into the GameObject Variable in the FSM?

Red

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #27 on: May 17, 2013, 01:52:14 PM »
Off the top of my head i'd suggest just inserting a new state and telling it to find the right object but given how i know the architecture, that'd probably cause the rest of the other AIs (v1.1) that don't use that same waypoint will cause some issues... the reason i kept it as drag and drop was because the game that's being made might have multiple waypoint management systems in there and multiple posse's of enemies... and since they all use the same AI system at it's core, putting in an automatic system would warrant a lot of workarounds to make sure that the AIs are finding their waypoint managers and not confusing it with others.

i can do some research but to be honest, i can't be expected to be able to anticipate every possible iteration of problems that come through (as much as i'd like to, i can't read the future... and if i could, i'd probably not be a freelancer in the CG industry doing game-dev and asset-packs in my spare time, i'd be a lotto-millionaire! :lol:) I will certainly do what i can to assist but i cannot assure you that i can fix this since i hadn't anticipated it the way you're needing it.

I would assume you're using a spawning system then? if so... a possible workaround could be that if there are enemies spawning from a certain point, you could place the waypoint manager in there as a game-object variable and then as it spawns the enemies you need it'd then feed that information into the AI system itself... though, you'd also have to set up a system to have the AI pause because as it is right now it just goes into the process assuming things are set up and would probably need to have a "waiting" state so that it can wait for the spawner's actions to finish up and feed it the correct information before proceeding (since it's got the automatic systems to default to random wandering if the manager systems aren't populated with the appropriate information.)

if you make a new thread with your own game in mind, that might be a better place since then we can focus on that since this is getting a bit outside of the intended scope of the asset pack. i do want to see if i can help, but, since this is being adjusted past factory settings, it might need some additional scrutiny and such and keeping it in this thread might be confusing to other asset-pack users.

All told, however, this is giving me some additional input in how i might refine the AI systems for the next iteration... so, some good tips for a "basic AI v1.2" or something like that. i make no promises that it's going to be up in the store soon though since the process of making, testing, documenting and clearing all the things i need to clear to get something up on the asset store is a lengthy process as is.
« Last Edit: May 17, 2013, 01:55:12 PM by Red »

TIGGYsmalls

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #28 on: May 17, 2013, 04:03:56 PM »
I am so dense...

Sorry, but I re-read what you put before and now its clicked.

I copied what you've done, got my own thing working now. I have made another state that drops a new waypoint too so the dude can find his way back.

Again, sorry. Thank you for the reply.

parnell

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Re: 3rd-person Action game framework!
« Reply #29 on: May 21, 2013, 05:10:28 AM »
Wow!
So glad to see you finish this.
Any chance of you posting a demo of the package?
Is it only Unity 4.0?  I'm still a 3.5 chump.
This is "Subshape" by the way...I watched all your previous videos on youtube and would love to pick up this package if it can run on Unity 3.5.
Thanks again for your hard work, and tutorial videos.
B