Sidescrolling, Keyboard-Controlled Game

joel

Hi Guys

I'm thinking very seriously about switching to Adventure Creator from another Engine. Now, i'm currently doing some intro video trainings to Unity to be up to speed to use AC, and i got a couple of questions about the kind of game i'm trying to make:

- I'm using Maya LT to do some 3D Elements but want to mix and match them with 2D Planes of photographs as well as 2D Characters made in Toon Boom Harmony. I'm sure this is possible with AC but which template should i use for this? 2d, 2.5d or 3d?

- I want my Characters only to walk on the X Axis (left and right) and have the whole game completely keyboard controlled. Is this possible out-of-the box? I'm kinda planning on an Interface similiar to that of "The Cat Lady" which was made with AGS. Nothing fancy or any Platforming Elements but the Hotspot Detection works with the Character overlapping the respective Action Areas instead of the Mouse Cursor etc.

Thanks for your feedback and i'm going to be at AdventureX in two weeks so i'm looking forward to maybe see some of you there

Thanks again!

ChrisIceBox

Welcome to the forum, @joel - looking forward to AdventureX as well.  Would be great to have some kind of "AC meetup"!

Camera perspective
The choice of 2D, 2.5D, or 3D mainly depends on the type of background, as sprite-based characters can work in all types.  2.5D is more of a "convenience" option, as it makes it easier to project still background images to the camera, but comes with the limitation of not being able to move the camera.

2D cameras will lock the perspective, so that panning gives a Ken Burns effect - so if you want the 3D elements to look 3D then I'd recommend going with 3D.  Be aware that with a custom Action, you can change the perspective mid-game however.

Character movement
Yes, you can control your player directly only in one-direction, and also detect Hotspot by using the player's vicinity (see this tutorial).  For convenience, regular sprite-based characters expect animations for at least the 4 compass directions, so if you want to also limit animation to just left and right, you'll have to look into using Sprites Unity Complex as your animation method - which allows you to build a custom Mecanim FSM and have AC simply control what parameters you let it.

joel

Hi Chris!

Yes, looking forward to it as well! I've been following you closely since the "Taste Lab" Days  

Oukay, it all is kind of gibberish to me now but hopefully over the next few months i will learn enough to go back to it and fully comprehend it. Important thing is, that it is possible and that seems to be the case

Thanks a ton!

joel

Oh, maybe one more thing: i kinda want to try the Toon Boom Unity Bridge with the SDK by Toon Boom which should work similiarly like it does with Spriter in theory. I'm guessing this should work as well as just using a .png sequence or something similiar?

And i really only need one perspective per Scene (just flat from the Side) there won't be any panning around or anything, so maybe the 2D preference is still kind of easier to use? As long as it doesn't show the 3D objects in Orthographic view or something.

This is kind of what i'm going for, just with Realtime 3D elements instead of everything prerendered and maybe some nice Zoom effects:

The dev of this game will be at AdventureX too by the way

ChrisIceBox

Oh wow, that takes me back.  Poor Suzie!

Have you been over the Manual?  It's free to download regardless of whethey you have AC or not, and should help with some of the terms.

joel

I'll have a look at it this weekend, when i'm through with the Unity basics Seems pretty easy to grasp so far, when you have some experience with 3D software so i'll go over the manual and already watched your video tutorials Thanks again!