Version 1.78 - Scene items, Events editor, and other building blocks
Note: This update makes a few changes to AC's API that affects some of the packages available on the Downloads page. These packages have been updated, so if you encounter an error from one after importing AC, update the Download package as well.
A common and welcome surprise on these forums is to hear how people leverage AC's features in surprising ways, finding novel ways to build things that I hadn't anticipated. To help with those looking to push AC a bit further, this update introduces a number of building blocks that should help making new features a little bit easier.
Key features:
Scene items
It's now much easier to manage the representation of an Inventory item as a GameObject in the scene. Once an Inventory item has been assigned a "Linked prefab", the Inventory: Scene item Action can be used to spawn and remove instances of it in the scene - optionally retaining a link back to the original item. Together with the Scene Item and Remember Scene Item components, this can be used to enable mechanics such as:
- Inspecting items from the Inventory with a "close up" mechanic
- Equipping items in the Player's hand, for interacting with the environment
- Dropping items from the Inventory into the sene, while allowing them to be picked up again later
A tutorial on the latter can be found here.
Events editor
Custom events have long been a handy way of extending AC through custom script. As an optional alternative, they can now also be used to run ActionLists automatically from the Events Editor window - without need for additional code. Event parameters can also be passed to the ActionList's parameters - allowing the object the event involved to be further manipulated. If you wish to run such events only in a particular scene, or associate them with a particular prefab, you can instead make use of the new Event Runner component.
A tutorial involving this can be found here.
New Actions
A handful of new Actions:
- Hotspot: Interact - use to interact with a Hotspot manually. This might be handy if making an "equip" system where you want to interact with a dynamic object in the Player's hands.
- Physics: Raycast - perform a RayCast or SphereCast in the scene (both 2D and 3D). Optionally, you can assign both the hit object, and the position, to GameObject and Vector3 parameters in the same ActionList.
- Input: Simulate - simulate the pressing of an AC input button or axis. If run from an Active Input, it can be used to dynamically enable/disable individual input recognition by enabling/disabling the Active Input.
Other features of note
The Menu: Set input box text Action has been upgraded, and renamed to Menu: Update content. It is now capable of updating the text of any Menu element type, and can also alter textures.
A much requested feature: individual Document pages can now be assigned textures. These can be modified through script at runtime, if e.g. a texture should change with the game's language.
Inventory Categories are no longer limited to Items - they can also be used to tag Documents and Objectives. InventoryBox elements that display Documents and Objectives can also be filtered by category, allowing for e.g. Main and Optional objectives lists.
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Comments
And the full changelog:
Upgrade notes
Inventory
Characters
Navigation
Events
Documents
Menus
Input
Saving
Conversations
Hotspots
Translations
Cameras
Variables
Misc
Would it be possible to have the raycasts be shown as a gizmo in the scene view?
I'll see - agreed that'd be handy.
Great update Chris. Thanks for continuing to support AC.
Yeah, looking great. Thanks for this!
This update solved or streamlined so many things. Fantastic work, as always.
These are great! Thank you so much, Chris!
Version 1.78.2:
Version 1.78.1:
Version 1.78.3:
Upgrade notes
The "Turn instantly when under player control?" option has been replaced with a "Turning mode" dropdown
Added: Option for Direct-controlled Players to turn and move independently when changing direction