Adventure Creator - a 3D engine for Unity

[theSynapse]

I find this incredibly exciting news. Many people have been worried about the limitations of AGS for a while now - particularly the publishing options. This is a wonderful step in the right direction.

I also don't have much money, but I simply cannot see how any of you would argue that £44(ish) is a bad deal for this kit. 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.

Iceman - the price point is great. You deserve to make something off this! I'll be buying it in the near future.

Re: 2D features. Yes, Unity are incredibly close to releasing them now. I was speaking to some of the Unity guys at the ExPlay conference the other week (where they were demoing the new 2D features) and some are them are excellent and will make working in 2D a lot nicer. They've also made some improvements in the UI system of Unity (one of Unity devs biggest gripes). Whether these 2D features will be better than using 2D Toolkit or NGUI etc., I'm not sure, but it's a step in the right direction.

Iceman - 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)!

Again, well done on this outstanding achievement, and all the best for your business! 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.

[theSynapse]

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.

Especially when it comes down to stuff like that variable panel thing where you specify conditions based upon bools and ints... it's just not flexible enough for someone who wants to break new ground a little.

Fair point, but all the source code is there. I presume it's going to be in C# Iceman?

So that means that you'd have to script extra stuff in C#. Although I've never actually used AGS, and can't see how this would be much different to learning AGSScript and implementing something in that.

[IceMan]

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.

[IceMan]

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!

[theSynapse]

Amazeballs!

It's great to see this tool carry on developing and increase in support. Fantastic that it's getting good 2D support now as well.

Good one Iceman!

[Gribbler]

In fact, there's a even brand new 2D demo to try out

This 2d demo game requires "Unity web player". I installed it, restarted browser and nothing happens. I still can't play 2d demo. As if I didn't install anything. Do you know what I could be doing wrong?

[Armageddon]

Your browser might be old or bad.

[Gribbler]

It's a sad and tired IE so I guess you're right I'm gonna try different browser.

[Armageddon]

Why would you use IE? Do you want your computer to explode? Get Chrome or Opera or Firefox.

[Gribbler]

Why would you use IE? Do you want your computer to explode?

No, I just like eating soup with a fork.

[jwalt]

Another option might be The Castle Game Engine. I grabbed some RON assets and put them into a few image controls dropped on a form:

[imgzoom]http://i1341.photobucket.com/albums/o756/jwalt10705/lazarusRON1_zps438ce314.png[/imgzoom]

Engine uses Pascal and the Lazarus IDE. I've yet to get some of the examples to run, so my mind is still not made up. Castle does both 2D and 3D. Not nearly as user friendly as AGS.

[Grim]

This is VERY impressive, but I still feel like I kinda wanna wait until it's finished before I start making a game with it, just in case.

I'm making an AGS game at the moment but my next game is definitely gonna be done with Adventure Creator & Unity.

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

[David Ostman]

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.

[abstauber]

@Grim
For those 1579$ you need to pay, you could also hire a coder to extend AGS to those features you seem to be missing.

edit again - I just realized that I was going totally off-topic.
Even though I won't leave AGS for anything else, AC sure looks cool.

[IceMan]

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

[Grim]

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.

What I do like about AGS is that at the stage where I'm at now I feel totally comfortable with ALL its features, which speeds everything up a lot. To learn Unity now would be a pain in the ass, but obviously there is a long list of reasons to do that- portability, resolutions, performance etc. I really like that Iceman actually does so much work to create an ultimate adventure game maker and I am a great believer that sooner or later it will reach that stage where you can safely dive into it. And yes, Iceman, you're right that the only way to get there is to have this constant feedback from users. But at the same time, Unity forums will probably provide much better feedback since most people there are already familiar with how Unity works.

Having met the man himself at AdventureX I can tell he is very passionate about this and knows what he's doing.

[IceMan]

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.

[Darth Mandarb]

$1,579.00 for a piece of software is just ridiculous (I have about 15-20 other adjectives I could use as well).

I am well aware of all the [lame] excuses developers use to rationalize the ass-raping prices they charge and it's ALL nonsense. 

There is no reason to charge that asinine price other than greed.  Make it a reasonable price and you'd sell 100x as many making twice as much money in the end.

Year after year people price gouge like this and the trend just continues on and on.  I bet they also bitch about piracy and just don't understand why people are pirating their software.

**sigh**

[DoorKnobHandle]

I've posted this several times before but I think I keep getting ignored so I'll say it again: you don't need to pay for Unity, the free version is full-featured and allows you to even sell your game (to some extent). It's only limited when it comes to shaders and advanced FX. The free version even supports building your game for a ton of platforms these days. If you don't like Unity because of its design or whatever, that's fine but disliking it because of its business model is unfair and, quite frankly, ridiculous.

[Darth Mandarb]

Ouch!  DKH, do you have a hand in Unity?  That sounded like you took what I said personally.  I wasn't trying to offend you (or anybody).  Just expressing my opinions/frustrations about over-priced software in the modern world.

I haven't used the program, so I can't (and didn't) say if I like it or not.

However, I don't think disliking something because of its price tag is ridiculous (or unfair) though, particularly when the price is ridiculous.  The price tag is usually the first exposure a person has with a product.  I would wager a LOT of people see the price tag and just click away and don't even bother.  Just my opinion.

I get that there's a (sort of) full-featured free version but if I don't have FULL-CONTROL over my games (selling, etc), without being forced to pay the hefty price tag, then I'd just find another system to use (like AGS which is $1,579.00 less).

I look at it like this:

If I created a game making engine that allows people to create (and sell) their own games I would make it 100% free to use, 100% full featured (nothing held back or extorted for a price) and you can distribute your games as freeware with ZERO limitations.  If you want to go commercial with your games you have to buy a license.  Now, in the modern world, there's this impression that this must be over-the-top expensive.  This is stupid.  Instead of selling a license for $10,000 (and selling 100 of them making $1,000,000.00).  I'd price it at $29.99 (full license) and sell 100,000 of them and make $2,999,000.00 (3 times as much money for lowering the price to something reasonable).  It really is a no-brainer.  You make MUCH more money and get more exposure and market saturation with your engine.