The Strange School

I have played, the last few days, with various vehicle physics systems..
i would like to write a simple car system that will be tailored upon my needs, but i'm no coder:(
i understand basics, and have healthy analytical thinking.. but.. i'm not a coder:P

i'm designer and tinkerer.. been full time graphics/product/industrial designer for the last 15 years, or so..

i would like to have nice controls.. thinking of somewhat faster and dynamic movement.. to drive in to the room, drifting, taking down enemies, and drifting out.. also, some basic car damage, maybe some mesh deform/detachable parts.. some influence on engine/steering, depending on damage..

as you said, car physics scripts i used (edy's and randomation's).. at first, everything is amazing.. then you remove some, add some.. and you hit a wall.. and there is a bug.. and you can cry.. i don't know what to do now.. do i start from the scratch and try to create my own car controller and ai.. or to dig deeper in finished systems.. i think i'll bite a fist and go through entire multiple hour "create car controller" tutorial for C#, and then try to convert it to playmaker..

about a weapons.. yeah, AOE is on my list.. i made some rockets with add force on collision.. would like to add a force on all objects in range depending on epicenter of explosion.. something like getting all object in blast radius, get distance from epicenter.. store data in arrays.. and apply the force on each object based on distance from explosion.. or something like that..

i'll take a look at your scripts and tyvm for that.. but cant promise i'll understand anything:P

man.. so demoralizing when you hit a wall like that:D
there is only one solution.. i'll have to learn how to make my own controller and ai.. simple as that..
i have a hunch that it will bite me in the a.. if i don't do that..

here is the short vid of where i am, at the moment.. this is pretty close to what i have imagined..
but i'm afraid i'll have to try to recreate that from scratch..

so, you are partly croatian :) dubrovnik is beautiful place, ston also.. i'm from zagreb.. havent visited dubrovnik yet.. i'm staying mostly in zadar.. during summer vacation..

those cubes are rabbits and each car is following his cube.. blue cube is leader, patrolling.. rest are following the leader..

No probs, I've also been very busy.. I dived into learning all about asset creation.. modeling, map baking and texturing stuff.
I can tell that Substance Painter is my new favorite piece of software :) And I barely scratched the surface..
Posted some results over here: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/imbrogames

Yea, I finished my generator using DunGen, I did some modifications to it.. Transferred more control to Playmaker..
In DunGen, you create your tilesets where you include all your prefab tiles and you adjust their weights, tune appearance on main path and/or dungeon branches.. Tile is just a prefab with certain number of doorway objects attached to it.
After that, you create dungeon archetype where you define your tilesets to use (can add separate branch cap tiles), you define number and lengths of branches..
Last step is to create dungeon flow, where you define main path length, special tiles injection and global prefabs.. also you get neat dungeon graph where you can add multiple dungeon archetypes, setup mini-boss rooms, start/end room..

The thing is that I wanted to add more control and to be able to spawn tiles more adjusted to general layout.. since i'm doing the roads, I didn't want road to end in a closed wall..
So I got a lil creative. Made empty tiles, only with doorways + 4 additional empty game objects, since DunGen can spawn/destroy objects regarding witch doors are used. I told it to destroy game objects attached to closed doors, so I would get only used ones.

The trick is in naming that objects. North door object is 1000, W = 100, S = 10, E = 1.
So when I add together all the numbers left after tile placement, i get number and position of doors in a binary way..

Like:
N W S E
0 0 0 0

1010 would mean that north and south doors are spawned..

I also attached FSM to empty object in center of tile and created some sort of logic switch. First I get all the children names, convert them to int, add them to my GeneratorInt int (by default is 90000, so i could get 90010, otherwise i would get 10, and that would break the logic). The last step is to run that int through int switch, and now i can spawn entire prefabs depending on doors.. yeah.. I don't think i explained it that well, but it works..
here is screenshot of FSM, and the result.. i only need to add some variation now to make it more interesting..

anyways, learned a lot..
have a nice day!

Regards the Behavior Designer tutorials I installed everything as instructed in the 4th video and haven't touched anything, but the PlayerSphere wont move using keys, (there are no scripts attached for controlling the character).

Thanks for getting back. I am actually quite keen to do this course as I am not a coder, but want to do AI for a game I am trying to build. I am using Unity5.3.4f1, PlayMaker 1.8.0.f43 and BD 1.5.6. I tried using your 3rd person prefab in another scene and he works fine.

It works! Thanks for taking the time to walk me through it again with the description and screenshots. This time I used ecosystem for both PlayMaker add-ons, maybe I downloaded a wrong version first time around.

Checked the PlayerSphere was controllable before installing the add-ons and after. The FSM screenshots match. I suspected that the PlayerSphere movement was via the FSM's rather than character scripts. Looking forward to learning Behavior Designer in the course (yours are the only true tutorials on it I can find).

Hi Mister Strange.

In your Behavior Designer course I have gotten to video 15 where quite a few tasks were added before you go to a test, at which my party monster cannot detect the player and stops doing anything. Especially as the tree is too big for me to read their labels I don't know what is wrong. How best can you see what is wrong with it? Screenshots? Could I package the project as is and send it to you?

I admit I barely understood up to the point where we set up the patrol, seek and melee attack behaviors. Incidentally that behavior is enough for my own FPS which is in a very early stage of development and where the enemies are mostly animals.

By the way the course has been and will be very valuable for me, I would not have a hope as non coder of making AI otherwise.

Thanks for getting back. Yes I realize I gave you nothing to go on. But I will have another go on that section in about a week and see if it still has problems, if so I will describe them with text and screenshots.

For my own game I am building a basic enemy (a box currently standing in for a winged creature) vs player (with a gun) scene using UFPS, Behavior Designer and PlayMaker with their integration add-ons.

I have the player set up using UFPS and a simple patrol and seek AI with animations for flying, diving and attacking. For player damage and enemy damage (and death) I am unsure what is the best way to do things. I also have the prefab for "PlayMaker Ultimate FPS Camera Activities".

I am thinking I need to somehow get information of the players shots into the enemy via UFPS (using I don't know what inputs) to a health manager set up through PlayMaker to trigger a death animation via Behavior Designer.

As for player damage from enemy, I know UFPS can manage damage and health. I need to somehow record enemy damage to the player perhaps again using a health manager set up through PlayMaker to trigger a death animation via Behavior Designer.

Could you please give me your suggestion/s as to which Editor extensions to use and how?

Hello again Mr Strange, I am considering doing your PlayMaker course, in the expectation that I may should gain a clearer understanding of making games, of using PlayMaker and consequently Behavior Designer. I have watched some of your introductory videos for the course and it's the clearest description of the process I have ever heard.

I have an art background and I first started making 3D assets for my game 3 years ago. I have began but not finished several courses in coding, having never really understood. I have also done a couple of PlayMaker courses via Udemy but not completed them because I couldn't get things to work despite spending months trying. I have continued to work on my own game with what little I do understand.

If I do your PlayMaker course (pretty expensive in Australian dollars) I will return to the Behavior Designer course later and problems like how to set up AI and player health in my own game. Please convince me.

Thanks so much for the quick reply. At that price it's so easy to decide. I will start the course straight away.

Excuse me for returning to the above post and I don't know if you are familiar with using Ultimate FPS but it clearly "knows" when a ray-cast hits an object (Surface and Decal Manager) and it monitors how many shots are fired, in general. I could do the First Person Controller and weapon handling all in PlayMaker but UFPS makes it fairly easy to set up. However I haven't found a way to use it to detect shots into an particular enemy game object, but I am thinking in principle I should be able to use PlayMaker to retrieve data from UFPS to detect enemy hits and assign damage via a health FSM and initiate a death animation? What do you think?

Thanks, just wanted assurance that this could be done, as I do want to use UFPS in my own game. As for now though I will concentrate on completing your courses.

I also posted about how to do group AI behavior (movement which could be made by simply parenting I guess) in your 'Post your tutorial requests here!' forum, but I wont be looking at that for a while either.

Hey MDot, great tuts. Just curious, you mention you've been reading AI and game design books a few times in your videos. Could you give us a list of recommended reads? Apologies if you have this somewhere and I've missed it

Thanks!

I read GameAIPro_Chapter27_Tactical_Pathfinding_on_a_NavMesh. Interesting as far as I could follow it. But geometry! I can barely add up.

Hi Mr Strange.

I want to use a health slider and ammo counter for the player on my own game which uses UFPS. I don't want to use their UI. I have setup my own health bar (and a stamina bar for later use with a FSM), and an ammo counter which has a text field for the numbers. I want to input UFPS player health and ammo count data and display it in these ui elements.

PlayMaker has an Ultimate FPS Camera package: https://hutonggames.fogbugz.com/default.asp?W1110
Should be able to use 'Ufps Get Health' and 'Ufps Set Health'. For the ammo count there is 'Ufps Get Ammo count'.

Can you help me work out how to use PlayMaker to do this? Just doing this first would be a big breakthrough for me.

A later ambition is to somehow use the UFPS player to detect damage on AI enemies. I want to initiate damage and death animations for AI enemies using UFPS melee and firearms. I also want to feed in damage (and death) done by AI to the player and have that reflected in their health bar.

I have found it difficult to burrow into the UFPS scripts (via the Inspector) to find familiar components like collision triggers. I don't know how they work. However I know that UFPS uses raycasting to attach appropriate decals to surfaces that are 'struck'. So it could be used to identify AI?

UFPS uses a damage handler script on objects (such as the player and AI gun turrets) which sets their health parameters. I have found that on both melee and firearms weapons UFPS uses vp_Weapon Shooter scripts, they use projectile prefabs which have vp_FX Bullet scripts including damage handler and scan type (eg. Raycast) settings.