How to make a 2d/3d game with AC?

laridk88

Hello everyone!

I am totally new to AC. I downloaded it yesterday and I am excited to get started.

My question is more of a process/ technical one. So my game has 2d scenes, which are going to be dialogue/choice based Visual Novel style, but there are some scenes that will be 3d 1st person. I was just wondering how should I set up my project, since the Wizard asks you what kind of game you are making... should I create two projects, one 2d one 3d and connect them somehow?

Thanks a lot in advance!

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the community, @laridk88.

Only one project will be needed. The first thing to bear in mind is that all of the options set up by the Wizard are just for convenience - everything can be altered later if you change your mind.

When creating a new scene, it will - by default - refer to your Settings Manager's Camera perspective setting, i.e. 2D/3D etc. However, it's possible to override this when initialising the scene - just check Override default perspective? at the top of the Scene Manager before organising the room objects underneath. I suppose whether you set your default as 3D, and override the 2D scenes, or vice-versa is down to which perspective is used more often.

When it comes to First Person, this movement method is specific to 3D - so you'll need to alter your Movement method at runtime, as well as rely on a Player character set up to work in First Person.

Switching Movement method can be done with the Engine: Manage systems Action - I expect it'd be a case of running this when you enter a 3D First-person scene, and run it again to revert back to i.e. Point And Click / None when exiting. Just be aware, however, that this affects the global setting in the Settings Manager - so such a change will survive exiting Play mode. Because of this, it's a good idea to assign an ActionList on start game asset that sets the initial value.

For the Player: your Player prefab is assigned in the Settings Manager - but again, this is only the default. You can override the Player on a per-scene basis by dropping a Player character into the scene file. This'll work even if you don't have a default on-screen Player (as is often the case with visual novels).

I appreciate this is a fair bit to take in at once, so if you need clarification on anything just let me know and I'll be happy to elaborate.