Playmaker Forum
PlayMaker News => User Showcase => Topic started by: Red on March 27, 2013, 08:24:55 AM
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That asset-pack i was talking about has finally been vetted by the Unity staff and it's now available on the asset store!
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/7611
as you can tell if you've been following my tutorial series, the AI and camera system is there but there are some extras which i'll be releasing tutorial videos soon to cover... so, if you aren't sure you want to drop $10 to get this pack, if you're patient, i will be covering all of it on my tutorial videos soon.
Wasn't sure if this should be general discussion or the showcase so i thought showcase would probably be a better option since it's technically a complete game in and of itself (aside from there being no art assets... but that's where you can drop your own in there.)
If you have any questions feel free to ask them and i'll do my best to make sure they're answered.
Please note, the lists of tutorials below are not a direct indicator of the package's current assets... there are some there that I am aiming to incorporate once i've finalized something that works well out of the box as well as some hints at what direction i'd like to take this package.
Also, a disclaimer... the art assets that are on the asset page are used for promotional purposes only and the geometry and textures are not included in the pack. I'm not yet ready to sell those since they're from my current game.
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I have finally added a survey that customers can fill out to help me improve on the package as well as to improve the ease-of-use of this package.
You can find the survey here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1OgIv621BI3YVNiItuniBWFeXxF7nCiQI2svFi1Egv4w/viewform
Please do not fill this out if you haven't purchased this package... Also, try and play around with it a bit first before filling it out. That way you can get a better feel for how much value this package has for you as well as to give you a better understanding of it's functionality. If you have an immidiate concern that you would like to have addressed, feel free to contact me either here on this forum through the private messaging function, as a comment (though to be honest I would much prefer it being private but if you would rather not then that's okay) or through email at BadSeedGames at gmail dot com.
I am also looking into the possibility of offering one-on-one consultations to help you get on your way or to help figure out any difficulties you may be having. this will need to be done through Skype so please ask me in private what to add... I will also be using the Join-me screen sharing application so you can be assured that the consultations will be private. That said, if you wish to have a consultation set up please understand that it should be mainly for technical questions and any difficulties... I can and am willing to help you shape your own game but this isn't to say that i'm going to do the work for you ;)
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I'm going to snag this spot for a chapter listing of the assets in the packs and the links to the appropriate videos. Please note that there are some features in some of the chapters that go beyond what the tutorial videos show. there will be videos of these in the future but for now, you can consider them bonuses if you decide you would rather not wait for the videos to be posted.
Basic AI V1.0:
Basic AI V1.1:
-coming soon-
Third-person Camera system:
Teleporter:
Player management and instantiation:
-coming soon-
Weapon Management and Selection:
-coming soon-
Weapons:
-coming soon-
Weapon Pickups:
-coming soon-
Health and Status-Effects:
-coming soon-
The Regeneration station:
-coming soon-
Particle effects:
-coming soon-
Dynamic pooling:
-coming soon-
Targeting and Material management:
-coming soon-
Mecanim Integration:
-coming soon-
Navmesh Integration:
-coming soon-
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Yes, I know there are more "coming soon"s than there are links... I've not forgotten about them and I have been working towards getting them up. Rest assured I do want to make sure that there are eventually no more "coming soon"s on that list. All I ask is for some patience because I want to make sure I do it right (and that takes work.)
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Great Red, i bought it immediately .
We need more of these templates, for example a 3d space shooter or a racing template.
Can you also make a tutorial to integrate animated characters with the player and enemies.
Keep up the good work.
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wow, Thanks! :D
I do agree, there is surely a niche in the asset store for templates for complete games... as awesome as the various learning materials are one thing i've noticed is that when it comes to games, there are a finite number of ways to execute it... so, as powerful as game development can be, most people tend to gravitate to one of a handful of types of gameplay structures (from FPS, run-n-jumps, side-scrollers, third-person, driving, sim, god-games, etc...) there are a lot of structures but it's rare where a gameplay structure diverges from the lot and succeeds in doing so.
With that being said, it's kinda like that phrase "it's all be done before" which is kinda true... so, whenever people ask me what it takes to be in game development, it isn't purely innovation, it's also how you do it... for example, my actual game-game is a top-down action game and it's not bringing anything significantly new to the table (As a lot of the mechanics have been used in other games before it.) but, i'm not doing it to be unique or original, i'm doing it because i think it'd be a fun game to play and that's kinda what gaming is about... having fun.
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Great Red ;D
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Cool, looking forward to buy it.
I got couple of packages submitted to Asset Store. I don't know what's going on there. First, I wait for 15 days to hear that I have to change the name of the package. I resubmitted. Then after waiting another 25 days, and repeated reminder mails to them, there's still no sign of the package. Then I mailed their admins, they said that they can't find my package in the queue. I resubmitted again, counting another 5 days, still no sign of it.
It's kinda test of patience.
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hi,
sorry for stupid question,but what is Dynamic pooling?
Thanks in advance.
dev
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Hi Red,
This is really looking great, congrats! I hope you will do well on the asset store!!!
Bye,
Jean
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Thank you very much for all the encouragement!
to dev_xrt: Pooling is as best as i understand a way of having objects that would be instantiated as being already created but stored somewhere in an inert state. the way i have the system set up in the pack is that you make a prefab from the "pool" base object, rename it, tell it what object it's going to handle and how many to have as a minimum and it'll always make sure that there is enough in your pool for when you need to instantiate. it's a way of shaving down the costs on the CPU because in my tests, i kinda realized that the weapon systems for my game would cause a momentary pause when the ninja threw too many shuriken. I'm sure there's a lot more to it and i've seen some pooling packages that are pretty hardcore but the one in the asset pack is just a basic one. it helps keep the costs low as long as the weapon using it talks to it in the right way (not hard at all... look at the landmine weapon object for how i had it set up.)
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Hi Red,
I am new to Playmaker, and decided to buy your 3rd person action game framework because i mostly enjoy this gameplay style.
Can I make a 3rd person melee fighting game with your asset or is this only for shooting games? i'm sure i probably can use it for melee style, but i guess what im really asking is how hard will it be to do as it seems you designed to work better for shooting games.
please do let me know when you can.
thanks.
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Kuroato: Well, it was designed with a primarily ranged weapon system but given that all the weapons that are used are separate objects themselves, you can code them to behave however you want. A couple ways i'd probably tackle a melee set would be to have one being timed by the animation with a bounding box where you want to have something like the fist collider, knife collider, etc and give that a set of on-offs and toggles so you can store the details of the hit... using that method you can fire off a quick little "i've hit you" event with the data used (so, a float for the damage you're dealing or a toggle for a status effect, etc.) Another way would be to have a basic collider on the weapon itself and have a sort of collection algorithm made up that will gather how many enemies are in a particular zone (probably a trigger) and you could choose a random one or many... what you shape the trigger as will determine it's general feel so a tornado kick might be a round trigger whereas a forward lunge will have a more rectangular trigger.
I'm sure there are more, but that's why i aimed for a more "gameObject" driven system. it's easier to swap them out as you need without having to alter the character's base "code" as you will. I guess you could use this sort of game slotting for any kind of game, really... it all depends on what you want to do with it.
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just purchased this, interested to see how your weapon system works.
As already said could do with more like this
Andy
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Hey Red!
I just saw this post, I'll pick it up later today - looking forward to seeing how you handle the systems =)
I really want to put one of these together as well, so its encouraging to see other people submitting kits and getting the ball rolling.
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I really want to put one of these together as well, so its encouraging to see other people submitting kits and getting the ball rolling.
Go for it!
Though, be sure to put together an as comprehensive as possible help file. a good rule is to assume that the end user has no idea what any of it is (assuming a general level of knowledge of Unity's systems is a good place though... makes no sense reiterating something that's in their help file.)
The first time this was rejected, it was because the EULA i wrote conflicted with their own (which is solid and probably much more comprehensive and protecting because Unity does have access to an actual lawyer... so, why reinvent the wheel?) second time was because the help files i had were not good.
if you've got it, read the help file and the tips and tricks. most of it will probably be old-hat for you anyway but take a look at what got this one cleared... I don't know how much you could pare away from mine or how you'd have to set it up for your own system but if you've got the drive, certainly go for it!
If you'd like, maybe we can collaborate so that we know what packages we're putting up so we don't step on each other's toes? I mean, yeah, if you feel you could do a better job with the asset pack, by all means (just don't repackage my own into your own pack ;)) I mean, i have a whole bunch in mind but not many of them have stuff behind them and the results of the one i've got on the asset store are encouraging (though i don't expect this to be a constant thing.)
So, if you want to do an asset pack, definitely do it! just make sure you cross all your Ts and dot all your Is.
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I'll probably end up picking this up at some time. Your asset store page would be better if you had a youtube and webplayer link in it.
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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.
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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.)
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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
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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.
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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.
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+1 for an simple pdf.
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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.)
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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.
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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.
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Can you please explain how you load the Waypoint container/Waypoints into the Movement FSM?
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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.
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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?
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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.
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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.
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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
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cool ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
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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
And thank you for being supporting!
as for demos... well, i've been made aware that the webplayer files aren't exactly good when it comes to encryption in that with the right program you can crack open the DLLs and extract everything that went into it from there... and since i do have a paranoid streak i'd be worried that someone would take it, crack it and share it around... sure that does kinda paint me in a bit of a "he's a money grubbing meanie" kinda view but to be honest there was a lot of work that went into this and it's currently helping me to be able to afford to get the packages and stuff that I need to complete my game (since i've been between gigs for a while and money is tight when I am.) Basically, the revenue from this package has given me the ability to invest in NGUI, various art assets which i'm not great at making myself, helping with animation source files... so, it's all being used to help make my dream of opening an actual game studio a reality, even though it's small steps (the game that's been taking the lion's share of my time and energy is what i hope will get me started on that path.)
As for unity 3.5... well, i want to... i really do... but i've only got one computer here and unless someone can point me in the right direction to have both versions of unity installed that aren't going to run conflicts between each other, i'm kinda stuck with 4 for now (though i AM hoping to invest in a lap top since i will need to travel... but that's a tall order.) i have talked to a couple room mates about it and they're kinda open to the idea but the timing is tricky since one is a truck driver and the other lives by their laptop so i can't give them a specific window as to how long i'd need to use their computer to do the testing of this package to ensure it's compatability with 3.5. I know i'm alienating a large portion of Unity users and I really wish that weren't the case but sometimes you have to play the cards you're dealt. :-\
As for an update to the general package itself, I've noticed that there have been some users here, there and other places that have had some difficulties so i'm looking into ways which i can offer some hand's on support so as to ensure that they have a smooth experience using them... and i've also gotten a lot closer to getting the PDF made up (with diagrams and illustrations and all that fancy stuff) as well as some hopeful additions to the entire package... I've been testing a pathing system as well as an aggro management system as well as some more weapons to use (so as to show how this system can handle multiple character classes since it is based off of the systems i'm using for my main game.) So, there's a lot that i've been working on to get this to work... that said, i don't want to include them until i KNOW that they will work and will be easy to use. as such, there's a lot of testing involved. (and so far as much as the pathing system is kinda working, it's still a little on the slow side of things and is a bit glitchy at times and doesn't seem to like it when there are too many (so far i've tested with an array of about 30 nodes... most of the slowdown is during initial compile though but still it's something that i'm trying to refine.)... I'm trying to iron that out.)
... that and i've also been fiddling around with a couple other packs... though, i'll save them for when they are ready (which is probably going to be a while since i do try and test them until they bleed so as to ensure that they are as functional as i can make them and as user-friendly as I am able to make them.)
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Same as Korda said, I will probably be picking this up at some point, but if it had a webplayer link so i could test it out, i would probably be way more intrigued to buy it :)
+1 for webplayer example and +100 for your effort in this! Great job
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Hmm... well, the webplayer is something i've been looking into and I've been given some measure of assurance that the level of separation that Playmaker gives should help add some extra problems if someone wanted to crack the webplayer build and extract the goods.
That said... I might have to see about getting another site set up... I'd like to use the one i've got but if they still have this "anything that's not a standard website file is considered a virus" approach then that might mean i'll have to look for another site.
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Just bought this and I have to say its jam packed with goodness , excellent stuff red cant wait for more
thank you