Update 1.56 - Performance and refinement

ChrisIceBox

It's that time again!  This update focuses on performance, fixes, and fine-tuning.  It does, however, make some key changes under the hood - so reading the Upgrade notes section of the changelog is especially important.  Please read first and back-up your projects before upgrading!


Upgrade notes

• If a SavesList element does not automatically handle the loading or saving, its Menu is no longer closed when clicked on
• If a SavesList element has "Fixed option number" checked, the "ActionList on click/save/load" now passes the chosen option as a parameter, not the slot index
• The "Options.SwitchProfile" and "Options.SwitchProfileIfExists" functions have been renamed to "Options.SwitchProfileID" and "Options.SwitchProfile" respectively
• For in-game changes to Journals to be saved, pages must now be listed in the Speech Manager by using the "Gather text" feature
• The Cursor's locked state is now recorded in save games
• The PlayerInput script's cursorIsLocked variable is now private, use IsCursorLocked() instead
• The Dialog script's GetDefaultAudioSource has been replaced with GetNarratorAudioSource

Performance

• Added: "Performance and optimisation" section to Manual
• Added: Performance boost to Sorting Maps, Menu system and Speech Manager
• Added: Ability to reduce Resources.LoadAll() calls when loading a saved game by placing assets in "Saveable" subfolders - see Manual's Section 13.6
• Added: AC's OnGUI code will now be ignored, and given a performance boost, if "ACIgnoreOnGUI" is listed as a Scripting Define Symbol

Saving

• Added: Ability for the "Save: Check" Action to check for saves by SavesList element slot index as well as save ID
• Changed: If a SavesList element does not automatically handle the loading or saving, its Menu is no longer closed when clicked on
• Changed: If a SavesList element has "Fixed option number" checked, the "ActionList on click/save/load" now passes the chosen option as a parameter, not the slot index
• Fixed: SavesList element's "ActionList on click/save/load" not accounting for the element's offset when passing the slot index value as a parameter
• Fixed: Player's first-person camera being made active upon loading a save game, even if the Movement method is not set to First Person

ChrisIceBox

Profiles

• Added: The "Save: Manage profiles" Action can now be used to switch the active profile manually
• Added: The "Options.CreateProfile" function now returns the created profile ID number
• Added: The "Save: Manage profiles" Action can now refer to profiles by ID number, as well as by slot index
• Added: Ability to prevent clicking of ProfilesList menu elements resulting in the active profile being automatically switched
• Added: Ability to send the profile index to an ActionList asset's integer parameter when clicking a ProfilesList menu element
• Added: Ability to have the ProfilesList menu element refer to a fixed profile ID only
• Added: The "Save: Check" Action can now check if a given profile exists
• Changed:
  The "Options.SwitchProfile" and "Options.SwitchProfileIfExists"
  functions have been renamed to "Options.SwitchProfileID" and
  "Options.SwitchProfile" respectively

Speech

• Added: "Dialogue: Rename option" Action - use to rename a Conversation's dialogue option labels
• Changed: The Dialog script's GetDefaultAudioSource has been replaced with GetNarratorAudioSource
• Fixed: "Reset text" button in Speech Manager ignoring certain Actions
• Fixed: Audio not stopping if a narration line is stopped using the "Dialogue: Stop speech" Action
• Fixed: Narration speech audio levels being affected by SFX reduction settings
• Fixed: Speed issues with speech-scrolling when Unity's Fixed Timestep setting is changed

Journals

• Added: Ability to insert and move pages within a Journal element in the Menu Manager
• Added: The currently-viewed page in a journal will now be recorded in save game files
• Changed:
  For in-game changes to Journals to be saved, pages must now be listed
  in the Speech Manager by using the "Gather text" feature
• Fixed: Display issue with Menu Manager if viewing a Journal element with too much text
• Fixed: Issues with journals that include colon characters in their page text

Menus

• Added: Ability to simulate right-clicks on Unity UI elements by pressing the "InteractionB" input
• Added: Option to reset Menus when using the "Engine: End game" Action to restart the game
• Added: Ability to control the opening and closing of Interaction Menus via script only
• Fixed: Issue when replacing inventory items while "Items can be re-ordered in Menu" is enabled

Cursor

• Added: Ability to sync system cursor's lock state with AC's cursor lock state (enabled by default)
• Changed: The PlayerInput script's cursorIsLocked variable is now private, use IsCursorLocked() instead
• Changed: The Cursor's locked state is now recorded in save games
• Fixed: Various issues related to free-aim locking when using Keyboard And Controller input
• Fixed: Game Camera Third Person no longer being draggable when the cursor is locked

Variables

• Added: Parameter values can now be set from Global Variables with the "ActionList: Set parameter" Action
• Added: Ability to create new Integer variables directly from the "Variable: Run sequence" Action

Sound

• Added: Ability to play sounds from Footstep Sounds component automatically as opposed to relying on Animation Events
• Added: Ability to define "run" sounds in Footstep Sounds component
• Added: Static "music" variable to KickStarter script

Draggables

• Added: Notice on Draggables that rely on Straight Tracks to recommend the use of a Sphere Collider to set their boundary limits
• Added: Ability to control the influence of the player's movement on the drag force when moving Draggables
• Fixed: Issue when dragging objects with an UFPS player prefab
• Fixed: Collide sounds not playing on Draggable objects
• Fixed: Speed issues with draggables when Unity's Fixed Timestep setting is changed

Player

• Added: Changes to Players made using "Character: Animate" are now saved when switching to and from scenes with local Players
• Added:
  Ability to control the player's ability to jump with the "Player:
  Constrain" Action when not using Point And Click movement
• Fixed: “Jump speed” field not showing in Settings Manager when using Touch Screen input
• Fixed: Wrong scene sometimes loading if Players present in the scene file are used in conjunction with Player prefabs
• Fixed: Switching Player sometimes causing the Player to become hidden if Loading Screens are enabled
• Fixed: First Person Camera moving slightly when unpausing the game when running fullscreen
• Fixed: Hotspots sometimes not highlighting when using Player Vicinity to detect them

Misc

• Added: OnContainerAdd and OnContainerRemove events, which are called when the player changes the contents of a Container
• Added: The UFPS Integration script now demonstrates how the HUD and crosshair can be hidden while AC's Pause menus are open
• Added: Public function _OnGUI () to StateHandler.cs - use to call AC's OnGUI code manually
• Added: Flash hold time slider to Highlight component
• Fixed: "Default Action" changing when new Actions are listed in the Actions Manager (after upgrading)
• Fixed: Screen Arrows not responding to drag input on Touch Screen devices

Mehrdad

Wooow . Great update. I really appreciate all that your hard works.

dude

Jipiiiii! Thank you :-)

ilmari

Thanks for all the hard work - especially adding all that performance stuff!

Calligram_Studios

• Added: Ability to create new Integer variables directly from the "Variable: Run sequence" Action

Booya! AC is the gift that keeps on giving. Thanks for all the hard work

themightyzq

This one's for you, @ChrisIceBox: 

Nick

Hello,

Thanks for the great update. I am really happy with AdventureCreator. I have a question.

I have seen that in this update, beside many changes Logic/Conversation no longer has 2 methods.

GetOptionStates ();

GetOptionLocks ();

I used that for ActionDialogOptionCheck to check the status in action list for certain conversations. What is the work-around or should I just implement those methods back?

Thanks again.

Nick

Also I noticed that ActionListManager no longer has a method called AreActionListsRunning

If I reimplement this method will it work in the grand scheme of things? 

ChrisIceBox

@ilmari:
And thank you for the suggestions!

@Nick:
GetOptionStates() and GetOptionLocks() were removed due to not being necessary for AC anymore - sorry I missed that in the changelog.  The data structure hasn't changed though - you could re-implement them in your own custom Action, since they just iterate through the Conversation script's public options List and adds each one's isOn / isLocked state to an array.

ActionListManager has an IsListRunning function - is that what you're looking for?  There wasn't one by the name of AreActionListsRunning in v1.55 - what previous version were you upgrading from?

Nick

Thanks for the quick reply.

I have re-implemented those functions already. They were very useful for me.

I had 1.54 before, but I added that AreActionListsRunning function and it seems to work great.

I only have a minor problem with Menu/InventoryItem Pickup And Drag, the icon seems "cut". I am looking into that.

In rest everything seem to work great. 

ChrisIceBox

@Nick: I don't know what you mean by "cut", but please post in a new thread in Technical Q&A when you have more detail to share.

Nick

I use inventory item with "icon only" display and I had the size set as "automatic" and that made the image icon to show only a few pixels from the top. The height was wrong. But setting the size to manual for that menu item solved my problem.

Thanks for everything!

Nick

I have a problem with InventoryItem->InventoryBox filter by category. 

If I add a filter from a certain category, by example with id=1, during gameplay if defaults to the category 0, the first one.

I have attached the image to show you what I mean. I found that inside MenuInventoryBox.cs the List categoryIDs receives the right ID inside the UI function, but during gameplay, inside the LimitByCategory() it has the wrong ID being set.

I have done an external fix for this setting the right category during runtime.

ChrisIceBox

What external fix did you do?  LimitByCategory looks fine to me, and I can't recreate the issue.  Please post details in a new thread in Technical Q&A.

jasong

Thanks for the update, Chris! Especially am grateful for the dialogue updates

However, I'm getting a couple of errors when I try to add actions in the ActionList Editor.

-In the editor I right-click and select "Add new action" and nothing happens, then 2 errors come up:
1st error:
Instance of  couldn't be created because there is no script with that name.
UnityEngine.ScriptableObject:CreateInstance(String)
AC.ActionListAssetEditor:AddAction(String, Int32, ActionListAsset) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListAssetEditor.cs:273)
AC.ActionListAssetEditor:ModifyAction(ActionListAsset, Action, String) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListAssetEditor.cs:420)
AC.ActionListEditorWindow:PerformEmptyCallBack(String) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListEditorWindow.cs:1939)
AC.ActionListEditorWindow:EmptyCallback(Object) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListEditorWindow.cs:1898)
UnityEditor.GenericMenu:CatchMenu(Object, String[], Int32)

2nd error:

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
AC.ActionListAssetEditor.AddAction (System.String className, Int32 i, AC.ActionListAsset _target) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListAssetEditor.cs:274)
AC.ActionListAssetEditor.ModifyAction (AC.ActionListAsset _target, AC.Action _action, System.String callback) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListAssetEditor.cs:420)
AC.ActionListEditorWindow.PerformEmptyCallBack (System.String objString) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListEditorWindow.cs:1939)
AC.ActionListEditorWindow.EmptyCallback (System.Object obj) (at Assets/AdventureCreator/Scripts/ActionList/Editor/ActionListEditorWindow.cs:1898)
UnityEditor.GenericMenu.CatchMenu (System.Object userData, System.String[] options, Int32 selected) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/editor/GenericMenuBindings.gen.cs:122)

Copying and pasting current actions work just fine.

ChrisIceBox

@jasong: This appears to be a duplicate of this issue.  Could you answer the same questions and perform the same steps as I advised in that thread?  It's a critical issue and needs to be solved properly.

ChrisIceBox

Version 1.56a

• Added: Ability to use a Sorting Map to scale characters according to an Animation Curve, as opposed to linearly between areas
• Added: Ability to resume a music track when playing or crossfading to a previously-played track with the “Sound: Play music” Action
• Added: Option to Footstep Sounds component to only play sounds when the character is grounded
• Added: OnVariableChange event - called whenever a Global or Local variable’s value is changed either through Actions or via scripting
• Added: Ability to set the Animator component of Mecanim-based characters explicitly (will continue to rely on the root Animator if not set)
• Added: Ability to skip speech via the SkipSpeech input only, as opposed to also by mouse-clicks
• Fixed: ”SkipSpeech” input not always listing in Settings Manager’s list of available inputs when it should be
• Fixed: Critical error when creating new Actions in v1.56

kici

Thank you for the SkipSpeech

May someone tell me the C# Code for letting me know a Dialogue/ Conversation is being played,  that way I can put a "Next" Button on the screen?

Thanks 

ChrisIceBox

@kici: If Dialog's GetLatestSpeech() doesn't return null, speech is playing.

tawny

hi, good news with the "Ability to resume a music track".
i also have some problems with crossfade, It only works instantly