A fair number of bugs are squashed in this release, but some nice features have still made it in:
UI 2.5D backgrounds
Unity are preparing to remove their Legacy UI system soon, with Unity 2017.2/3 giving warnings whenever GUILayer / GUITexture components are used. The 2.5D camera system has traditionally relied on the GUITexture component, but this release brings an optional Unity UI-based approach. The workflow is identical: choose the method in the BackgroundImage component, and assign a texture. Note that with the upcoming Unity 2017.3 release onwards, this will be the only method available. Therefore, if you're looking to upgrade an existing 2.5D project to the latest Unity release then you should make the change before changing Unity version.
Editor improvements
The About / New Game Wizard windows have been smartened up, and there's now a "Check for updates" button in the top toolbar. Links to create AC objects can now be accessed by right-clicking in the Hierarchy, and new tools allow you to export inventory and variable data. It's also now possible to convert Local variables to Global and vice-versa.
Ambience tracks
Similar to the way the Music system works, the new Sound: Play ambience Action lets you queue up and loop ambience (SFX) tracks that can survive scene changes and get saved automatically. The regular sound system still exists, but this'll make it easier to play background sounds when you also have music.
Random parameters
The ActionList: Set parameter Action can now be used to set random values when affecting Booleans, Integers and Floats. By calling this at the start of an ActionList, and have such parameters used in your Actions (e.g. a float to control Engine: Wait), it becomes much easier to incorporate randomisation into sequences.
Comments
Upgrade notes
- The "Require double-click to move?" toggle has been replaced with a "Double-click movement" popup field to allow for more options
- The OnInventoryCombine custom event is now called if an item is combined with itself
2.5D- Added: Unity UI can be used to handle 2.5D backgrounds instead of GUITextures to handle 2.5D backgrounds - in Unity 2017.3 and later, this is the only option
Editor- Added: "Check for updates" button to the About window and top toolbar
- Added: AC object links to Unity's GameObject and Hierarchy menus
- Added: "Cut", "Paste after" and "Insert after" options to Action cog menus in the ActionList Editor window
- Added: The "List active ActionLists" debug window now lists the active Player, and can be dragged
- Added: Newly-created ActionList assets now have their own Project view icon (Unity 2017+)
- Added: Minor cosmetic improvements to New Game Wizard
- Added: The scene's default PlayerStart now says so in its Inspector
- Added: Auto-create button for Default NavMesh in 2D scenes
- Fixed: Game Editor error if the Cursor or Inventory Managers are viewed with no Settings Manager assigned
Audio- Added: "Sound: Play ambience" Action - use to play, loop and queue ambient sounds independently from scenes
- Fixed: "Sound: Play" Action occasionally being skipped when resuming the game in Unity 2017
- Fixed: Sounds set to survive scene changes not removing themselves afterwards
Cameras- Added: Ability to override game's camera perspective setting on a per-scene basis when creating new scenes
- Added: OnCameraShake custom event - called whenever the "Camera: Shake" Action is run
Menus- Added: InventoryBox menu elements that display the selected item can now be limited by category
- Changed: The direct-navigation Menu options at the top of the Menu Manager now show for Mouse And Keyboard input, but only affect Unity UI-based Menus
- Fixed: Minor display issue with animated Interaction icons when editing
- Fixed: Performance issue with Unity UI-based Menus
- Fixed: Hover sounds not always playing for Menus that pause the game
- Fixed: Various issues with Unity UI and directly-controlled Menus
Variables- Added: Ability to convert Variables from Global to Local (and vice versa) in the Variables Manager
- Added: Ability to export variable data as CSV files
- Added: Ability to add internal descriptions to Variables, and filter by them in the Variables Manager
Inventory- Added: Ability to add internal descriptions to Inventory properties
- Added: Ability to import and export inventory item data as CSV files
- Added: The "Inventory: Check selected" Action can now query the last-selected item
- Added: The "Inventory: Check" Action can now query the number of carried items in a specific category
- Changed: The OnInventoryCombine custom event is now called if an item is combined with itself
Players- Added: If a game has multiple players, and audio files are assigned automatically, then players can optionally share the same speech lines with separate audio
- Fixed: Not all save data not restoring when switching Player prefab
- Fixed: Player sometimes not spawning at runtime if a Player prefab is selected in the Project window
Characters- Added: Ability to set the Layers used when Raycasting to determine if characters are grounded or not
- Added: Performance boost to Legacy-animated characters (credit to ilmari)
- Added: The "Vertical movement factor" field's affect on 2D character rotations is now optional (but enabled by default)
Input- Added: Option to override first-person touch-screen movement with custom inputs
- Changed: The "Require double-click to move?" toggle has been replaced with a "Double-click movement" popup field to allow for more options
MiscExcellent.
Any Menu can be linked to Unity UI, either as a prefab, or as a scene object. If you choose the latter (by setting its Source to Unity UI In Scene) you can connect it to a Canvas that renders in World Space, which is good for VR. You'll have to ensure that said scene object exists in every scene, though. More on Unity UI integration can be found in the "Unity UI menus" chapter.
I am at the beginning of a very large project, do you recommend keeping AC and Unity updated or not? At the moment I only have 3 scenes, but will have 100's as I progress. I am happy to discuss this via email if it is easier.
If you use the New Game Wizard (or just not the default/demo), then Managers won't be overwritten - but the Demo ones will be assigned in your Game Window upon a full import of the update.
This is because AC's record of which Managers are assigned are stored in the AdventureCreator/Resources/References file. I have looked into having this file omitted from the official AC package, and instead have it auto-generate in a project, but results have been unreliable and as it's essential to AC working I'm not happy with making such a change.
As @Alverik correctly points out, you can easily revert back to your own Managers afterwards by double-clicking the "Manager Package" file the NGW creates for you. An alternative method is to simply omit the References file when updating.
These are covered in Section 1.7 of the Manual if you'd like to know more.
But if you've instead been using the Demo game's Managers for your own game, these'll get overwritten when you update. In this case, just copy each of these Manager asset files, rename them, and use the duplicates instead (by assigning them in each Game Window tab manually). That way, only the original Demo assets will be affected - and not your own.
The only thing that was omitted was my character ,just had to drap my prefab back into the manager and it was good to go.
Thanks
- Added: The "Character: Change rendering" Action's "New order" and "New layer" fields now support parameters
- Added: When the inventory is modified through script, InventoryBox menu elements are now updated automatically, with no need to call ResetInventoryBoxes()
- Fixed: Game Editor window not opening upon first install due to a bug with Unity 2017.1
- Fixed: Inventory item label showing inappropriately if "Selected item’s display" is set to "Hide From Menu"
- Fixed: Errors in Speech Manager in rare circumstances
@Deckard_89: Indeed, a critical bug forced my hand. Basically the Game Editor window would fail to open until you restart Unity after importing AC. Really bizarre, but so far as I could tell it's an issue with Unity 2017.1 itself.Version 1.60.2:
https://imgur.com/EmRt7Xq
Upgrade notes