Messages

The one problem that bugs me is that this new engine is called Adventure Creator, which is quite weird when mentioned here.

An unfortunate coincidence -  AGSs former name didn't enter my mind at all when naming it.  All I was concerned about was that it made clear what the toolkit does - which was probably the same logic Chris Jones applied back in the 90s.

From a glance at the video you posted, it looks like the author of Adventure Creator has made the same oversight about animation as the Visionaire Studio guys did. The character is animated at a certain frame rate, but moves at 60 frames per second, creating a sliding effect. The only real workaround being to make a 60 FPS animation loop. I stick with AGS because it handles details like these correctly. It's also free, has an arguably better object model and is well documented.

Hi, I'm the author.  Just for the record, there's no oversight - AC can optionally move characters only when they animate.  Animation is, by default, handled using Unity's animation system - meaning the framerate is set to whatever value you choose.  However, there are many animation systems out there on the Unity Asset Store - so AC also allows you to instead animate characters using an engine of your own choice by writing a "bridge" script that connects the two systems.

Is that what full version of Unity costs- $1579? Well, I guess I'd go about developing the game with free version and once I saw it is actually working out, or nearly finished, it would be an investment that's most likely worth the price.

Unity Free still lets you publish games for free to an extent, I believe.  Incidentally, there's a sale on this week and AC's only $35 (plug ends here).

One of the areas that needs a serious update is the tutorial section - I made a bunch of videos early on but they're now getting out of date.  So lately, I've been writing some text-based tuts which I'm able to produce much more frequently.

Question: can you pan in and out on a 2D scene with 2D characters?

Sure can, it's one of the nice features that Unity makes so easy.  Have a look at the camera movement when you talk to the bird in the 2D Demo.

Yeah, I'm with you there, Grim. I took a few days to go through the tutorials and documentation and I came to the conclusion I'm better off waiting until AC matures a bit before I dive into it with anything other than a simple one-room test. I find it to be quite confusing at a first glance, and not very intuitive with tutorials that don't seem to quite be up to date. There's definitely some potential in it, but anything I'm working on will be very dialog heavy, and right now setting up lots of complex dialog trees is just way too painful without a proper tool.

Fair point that the tutorials are a little out of date - one of the problems with doing development/education in tandem is that certain features get quickly superceded by better ones.  AC's rapid development over the past few months is all down to the feedback and discussions that have been going on in the Unity forum, where people are using it in "real-case" projects rather than tutorials and demos - so really the best way for this to mature is for people to use it and let me know what areas need improvement.  I will try to spend some time making better educational resources, but rest assured that AC will indeed mature to the point where it'll suit your needs

[New 2D tools]

OK, been a while since I updated here!  Apologies for the tardiness, but that's not to say things have been slack on the development front with this.  The guys on the Unity forums have been keeping me busy, and update after update has been coming out, each time bringing new features and requests.  In fact, there's a even brand new 2D demo to try out:



Some of the big new features since I last wrote:

• New 2D tools - Sprite scaling, walk-behinds and and 8-directional character views mean you never have to work in 3D-space if your game is 2D, and with Unity's new 2D engine you don't need any other tool to make a sprite-based game.
• Custom Menu designer - Similar to AGS's GUI editor, you can customise the existing GUIs or build your own, all in a WYSIWYG designer.
• Mecanim animation support - As an alternative to the more friendly default animation system that takes care of layering and transitioning, the Mecanim system lets you build your own animation FSMs for finer control, and helps you add non-traditional elements to your game.
• Third-person camera - To let you make an "over-the-shoulder" type game, where the camera follows and spins around the player.
• PlayMaker support - Compatibility with Unity's popular PlayMaker asset, which is a more "general" script-free logic tool.

And that's not including the hundreds of smaller improvements and fixes.  I'm seeing snippets here and there of some of the games that people are starting to develop with Adventure Creator, and it's exciting to see what they come up with.  Meanwhile, dev continues - coming later this week, multiple player characters!

The amount of time it would cut down in making your own system is vast, if it continues to evolve and be supported it will be worth even more, and all the source code is there so it's as extensible as you like.

Thanks!  I think it indeed comes down to time-saving value, and I'm working away on new features as requests are made.  Upcoming shortly: a GUI-based menu designer (not dissimilar to AGS's own GUI editor).

if I wanted to do 2D stuff straight away without waiting for Unity to release their own stuff, do you think Adventure Creator would play nicely with 2D Toolkit? Any reason why they'd clash? I haven't used 2DTK at all yet, but it's what all the cool kids use (at least amongst Indies I've met)!

Admittedly I hadn't used 2DTK either until people requested compatibility, but rest assured it now works happily with my own kit.  Check my post just before yours for a couple of tutorials on using it.

I'm excited to get ahold of Unity's own 2D system, but I imagine the workflow on the Adventure Creator side will be much the same as it is for 2DTK.  I'm also planning to provide Mecanim support too, once it's developed enough.

I *so* hope you're all to come and demo this at AdventureX in a few weeks time, because this is an important step for graphic adventures I think.

I'm planning to!  I've booked a demo session, but I'm totally open to suggestions on how best to make use of the time.

Just an update: in the last couple of weeks, I've added Touch-screen support for iOS and Android, and laid the foundation for 2D and 2.5D games.  At the moment, 2D games require a separate 2D animation plugin called 2DToolkit, but when Unity comes out with their own 2D framework (soon, I think), I'll be supporting that as well.  More updates in the works!

Tutorials, for those curious:

• Making a 2.5D game
• 2D Cameras
• 2D Characters

I am generally sceptical of all GUI solutions because they invariably turn out to not be quite flexible enough for what you want to do.

Myself too, actually.  Much of the development time was spent finding the right balance between things being either automated or GUI-based, and having to hard-code everything.  I want things to be simple and friendly when they can be, but there's a risk of bringing in limitations when you take too much control away from the user.  I'm very keen to keep things away from a "this way or not at all" scenario.  It's a trade-off, but I think it's got a good balance now.  And, as Monsieur OUXX says, custom scripting is available.  It features a plug-and-play system for your own actions (events), but also allows for your own scripts to be called from within cutscenes - passing integers to custom functions.  I'm adding features as requests are made, but the kit definitely allows for more tailor-made code when needed.

Yeah all volume menus are maxed out so I'm not sure what's going on there. Any other things I've compiled all seem to work fine though.

Hmm. Try going to the music objects in the sound folder, and changing their sound "type" to Other.  This'll put their volumes back onto the regular Unity levels, does it work then?

The demo doesn't play any audio or music once built as an APK and tested on an Android device (two in fact).

Sorry to hear that - I haven't heard of anyone else having such an issue.  Check the in-game menu - are the volumes all displaying correctly?

Couldn't resist. Just purchased

Thanks, DazJ!  Just so you're aware, here's the link to the official Unity forum thread, which is always the first place updates are announced.

Wasn't AGS originally called Adventure Creator back in 1999 or so? It's like we've come full circle!

No toe-stepping intended, just grabbed whatever domain was available

New version out, iOS and Android now supported with Touch Screen input.

I recognize that voice! Shelly called me up a few days ago to ask how to pronounce "integer" and "boolean."

Hah, that's great!  Shelly was perfect - the trailer was literally done in a day, since the kit was approved about a week before I thought it was going to be.

This could finally be the reason to try Unity! I wish there was a trial version, though... I don't really want to spend 70 bucks and find out that I can't work with Unity after all...  Would you consider a free trial?

I wouldn't honestly know where to start on a trial version, but I've just released a tutorial series to get people started with it.  Hopefully you can use that to see if it's right for you.  AGSers might be particularly interested in the parts on hotspots and interactions.

How easy is it to setup sierra-style portrait animations with this?

You'd have to modify the GUI script a little, but it wouldn't be too difficult.  I didn't really expect that feature to be requested since it's in 3D, but I'll be looking into 2D features this week.  I'll consider that as a suggestion, thanks

Glad to see more of this type of thing.  Unfortunately, $70 is quite a chunk of cash, considering I'd also have to shell out for the full version of Unity.

It's totally compatible (and developed) with Unity Free, no need to go for Unity Pro unless you need pro features.

Perhaps you could demonstrate this engine at AdvX in a couple of months?

Have you considered coming to AdventureX and showing this off so people could get a hands on?

Sounds good!  I'll look into the other post and see if I can- OH MY GOD CHARLES CECIL!

you still have to know how to create & animate characters, build 3D props etc

That is true, at least until 2D support comes along.  I plan to work my way down by half Ds - 2.5 and then 2

Just sent an update off to the store - full iOS and Android support are soon coming.  I'm hoping to extend functionality to support 2D games as well, I'll keep you guys posted.

Thanks for the warm response, guys!

My only criticism is that Normality is not the best example of a first person adventure game!

Hah, I guess not, but it was the one I used to play as a kid (nostalgia..)

Seems great, but the name makes me feel odd, as AGS used to be called Adventure Creator in the past. Its name was changed to Adventure Game Studio only since V2.00 .

I hadn't thought of that.  Actually the name I chose was based on what domains were available when I was registering for one!

Wow, it's been too long since I was last here.  Since Da New Guys 2 last year, I've been looking to make a 3D adventure, though toolkit options were kind of limited.  So, I made one myself!

It's a plugin for Unity3D, and kind of a "Telltale tool", or at least similar to what I imagine it to be like.  There's a demo game you can play online for kicks.

Main website
Demo game
Video



Features:

• Make a complete adventure game with no code
• Point and click, direct and first-person controls
• Clean, intuitive interface made for designers
• Event system for cutscenes and interactions
• Character animation and conversations
• Timed sequences and arrow prompts
• Inventory items and global variables
• Controller support for all play styles
• Full saving and loading system
• Example project to learn from
• Customisable in-game GUI
• Extensive documentation
• In-game options menu
• Built-in pathfinding
• Translation support

My past experience in AGS really helped with the design, and has a few features like auto-speech line numbering that AGSers will recognise.  Regrettably it's not free, since it was a full-time gig to write it, but I hope it's of use to people looking to make a 3D adventure.  Windows, Mac, Linux supported, and mobile support soon.

Thanks for reading!

I'm already looking forward to the sequel!

Uh oh. 

Seriously though, glad you found it fun!  Thanks for the review.

Put any confusion in the code down to my own ineptitude 

I'm afraid my philosophy when it comes to coding is pretty much "If it works for me, don't go changing it"

You're welcome!