Something causing hotspots to "freeze up"
Hello-
I am now working on my 12th AC game... unbelievable! I have learned so much and am getting so much smarter with these creations - I adore this tool!
All of that said, something has me utterly stumped. I have created a "general store" scene where players grab objects (groceries that are homophones) from around the room and drag them (via Inventory:Select) to a hotspot elsewhere in the room (a set of 4 cabinets with the corresponding homophones). Since there are two words that players must identify, the door creaks partially open with the first word, then opens the remainder of the way after the second word. Once the door is fully open, the hotspots on the objects inside the cabinet become active and can be grabbed after a subtitle narration is dismissed Works great. BUT. Somewhere in the action list, something causes the interactions to stop working... sometimes. NO hotspots are clickable when this happens; it's kind of like there is an animation or a sound playing that is marked "wait until finish" is checked, but there isn't one that I can attribute to the effect as it seems to be intermittent. Sometimes it happens after the first door is opened, sometimes it's after the third... and sometimes it doesn't happen at all. WHAT THE HECK?!
I'm certain that it's something obvious (it almost always is), but I have done, undone, and redone everything I can think of. What am I not looking at??
Sample object's inspector:
Associated action lists:
Animation settings:
AC: 1.81.6
Unity: 2023.2.0b8.3202.5344
THANK YOU!
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Comments
The first screenshot is too blurry to make out - should the Animator component be enabled?
Best to enable the AC Status box via the bottom of the Settings Manager. That'll let you know if the game is currently in Cutscene mode, as well as the ActionLists that are causing it if so.
Sorry about the blurry screenshots - I clearly didn't look at them carefully!
After MUCH experimenting, I pinpointed the problem. I had to turn off the "wait until finished" component on the Object:Transform action (in the list to open the cupboard door). It was only supposed to last for 2 seconds - and I've used this MANY times before without issue - but it's like it just intermittently wasn't letting that delay go, even after the 2 seconds were up. It seems to be working fine now.
But this brings to light the fact that I don't guess I truly understand what a "cutscene" is. I thought it was a set of actions that would occur in between scenes - like a transition, but I can tell that's not necessarily the case. Can you clarify exactly what a cutscene is? And what does it mean if the game is in Cutscene mode??
Thank you
The term Cutscene essentially refers to a sequence that isn't playable - typically a moment of non-interactive storytelling:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutscene
In AC terms, "Cutscene" mode will cause the game to enter a non-interactive state - where the Player cannot move using regular input, or interact with Hotspots. Cutscene mode will be automatically entered if a running ActionList's When running field is set to Block Gameplay.