A couple of pre-purchase questions

NickVSM

Hi folks,

I’m a composer/sound designer by profession (mostly kids animated series work) but I also have an abiding love for the old point’n’click games, and a story burning a hole in my pocket. I figure it might be worth a crack at trying to put my own game together.

Adventure Creator looks pretty amazing. I’ve had a play with Visionaire and AGS in the past, but this seems to be a whole other level. Plus the easy access to a wide range of publishing formats is a huge benefit to anyone who aspires to a “proper” release.

I’ve not touched code for a LONG time (I used to write rudimentary text games in BASIC on the BBC Micro back in school!) so I love the node-based approach, but I like that coding is available as an option if needed. 

I had a couple of pre-purchase questions that I’m hoping someone could answer for me. Apologies if these have already been covered, or are “dumb” - I had a hunt around and couldn’t find answers, but I may have overlooked, and I’m new to Unity. Pretty quick learner though, so hopefully I won’t be bugging you too much once I hit my stride

1. 2D characters in 3D environments - Kind of the exact opposite of the “2.5D workflow” I guess! Is this possible? I’d love to be able to use some 3D environments for added depth, interactive lighting, tracking cameras etc. but I’m envisaging a “toony” style for my characters (which I’ll probably get some designer & animator mates to work on with me). I had considered maybe just using 3D characters with a toon shader, but it’s not quite the same. Is there a workflow that would allow i.e. putting rigged 2D character animation onto flat planes that always face the camera? 

2. Scene camera tracking laterally with character - A follow up to the previous point - can you set up a game camera in a 3D scene to track along with a player rather than pan with them? (i.e. the camera physically MOVES rather than rotates to follow).

3. Character gestures/expressions - I’ve seen the tutorial talking about controlling character expressions in the dialogue. It looks really useful, but I was wondering if it could also be used to insert more granular gestures etc. in the same way.

So i.e. the tutorial has the following example:

[expression:Happy]It’s a great day to make games!

[wait:1]

[expression:Sad]Too bad it’s Monday…

I’d love it to do something like this if possible:

[expression:Happy]It’s a [gesture:FistPump]great day to make games![gesture:HandsonHips]

[wait:1]

[expression:Sad][gesture:Slump]Too bad it’s Monday…[gesture:SingleTear]

I’m thinking I *may* even just be able to do this all using expressions, but I’d love to have this clarified.

4. Audio processing - I suspect this is more a Unity question, but is it possible to route game audio through realtime processing? i.e. reverb for large spaces. My feeling from reading the manual is that mixer groups will handle this, but if possible I’d love a “yes” or “no” before I dig too deep! As I said above, I’m a sound designer & composer, so I hope to really push this aspect of my game to the fore as much as possible.

Thanks all...

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the community, @NickVSM.

1. 2D characters in 3D environments

Yes - camera perspective and character rendering are separated, allowing you to mix and match.  If you use AC's Character Wizard on a sprite while making a 3D game, it'll also ask you if you want to have it work in 3D.  It's basically just a case of making sure it uses 3D Physics components (Rigidbody, Capsule Collider) instead of 2D ones.

2. Scene camera tracking laterally with character

Yes - the standard 3D GameCamera type allows you to control X, Y and Z motion according to a number of variables - including the target's position along an axis.  Custom cameras can also be written and integrated in quite easily.

3. Character gestures/expressions

Not in the current release, but this is actually going to be a feature in the next one.  AC's next release will allow for custom speech tokens of the form [key:value], which don't modify the speech text but instead trigger custom events (see this tutorial).  Granted, you'll need to script their effect, but you could just have each event trigger an ActionList / ActionList asset by invoking its Interact() function.

4. Audio processing

I should admit that I'm not too knowledgable on sound designing myself, but yes - AC can work with Unity's Mixer Groups, which in turn can handle realtime processing.  This can be done via scripting, or with AC's Sound: Set Mixer snapshot Action, which allows you to transition between one or more Audio Mixer Snapshots.

NickVSM

Hi Chris, and thanks for the prompt and thorough response!

1. That sounds really promising! So the 2D sprites will interact with lighting, cast shadows etc. in that mode?

2. Ditto! And I'm glad you got where I was coming from. Re-reading the question, if you had missed the word "laterally" it almost sounded like I was describing the Tomb-Raider style camera. I'm more thinking about a fancy-pants version of parallax, and it looks like I'll be able to accommodate it nicely, which is fantastic

3. Oh cool. I'll have a bit of a learning curve ahead of me with the project in general, so hopefully the new tools will arrive just in time.

4. From what I'm reading the Mixer Snapshots sounds like the go!

Apologies if this is all a bit fundamental - I suspect a lot of it I'll pick up from diving in, but I just wanted to get a sense of what I could expect to achieve.

Once again, thanks for the reply, and for putting together such a great tool. 

ChrisIceBox

1. 2D characters in 3D environments

The lighting/shadow aspect isn't handled by AC - that's on the Unity side.  AC takes care of the actual placement of the 2D character in the 3D scene, allowing it to move in 3D space, etc, but it's Unity that handles the rendering.  It's still all possible, but you'd have to look to the Unity forums for advice on shaders etc that can be used to get sprites actually looking good in 3D scenes.

2. Scene camera tracking laterally with character

Another trick related to 2D/3D mixing is that if you place a 2D camera (GameCamera2D) in the scene, and set the Projection field to Perspective, it's perspective will remain fixed when scrolling - creating a "Ken Burns" effect.  For regular 3D panning, you can just stick to a regular 3D camera (GameCamera) type.

Happy to help - and simple questions are easy to answer!  Also know that the Manual is available online regardless of purchase, which can give you a good idea of some of the finer features that AC offers.