Dev Blog

HFFWS Object Instantiation and Setting Their Node Values

digm520admin / / HFFWS, Programming, Scripting, Unity
August 13, 2019

Human Fall Flat Workshop

Instantiating Objects with Nodes

Youtube – Moving Platform Tutorial in Unity for Human Fall Flat

By: Gotcha McFee

I just wanted to reference this tutorial again as this is how I got the moving platform in the first place for HFFWS. This also shows why I am interested in the specific components and their values when instantiating the object. This object also has a lot of node graph involvement, which is a big part of HFFWS in general, so it shows why being able to control their values in script is so necessary.

Creating Object Spawner

I wanted to create a script that could take some of these HFFWS prefabs and start spawning them with various values for their variables to see if I could produce varied objects in real time in the game.

This script needs to be able to:

  • Take a prefab reference
  • Access certain components (or children’s components)
  • Access the parameters of the components(s)
  • Randomly set them (within a given threshold)
  • Create instances of the prefab with these given values

The components for MovingPlatformVertical that we need access to are:

    Parent

  • Mesh Renderer
  • Mesh Filter
  • Mesh Collider
  • Signal Math Mul (Script): In 2
    Children (Axis)

  • Transform (Rotation)
  • Linear Joint
    • Max Value
    • Max Speed
    • Max Acceleration

It turns out SignalMathMul and LinearJoint are both part of the HFFWS .dll file. You can gain access to these classes in script however with the namespace “HumanAPI”. So at the top of your Unity C# script, you just need to add “using HumanAPI” to reference this namespace to create variable references for these classes.

The next issue I ran into however was attempting to set node values within script. SignalMathMul uses the node system, and I wanted to change the In 2 value of this component in script. By creating a variable reference for a SignalMathMul object, I saw there was simply a variable I could access within it called “in2”, which seemed like the variable I was looking for. Trying to set this as a float, I got an error telling me this was actually of type NodeInput. After creating this object, I looked at the methods and variables available and found one simply called “value”. So I tried setting the value of my number NodeInput to 0.5f, and then setting this signalMathMul.in2 to number (in an attempt to set the input 2 value of the signalMathMul component to 0.5f) but this just resulted in 0 at run time.

TESTING

I think that something with the whole Net Body setup may be causing issues, as this may not like values of these components being set at run time. This may be causing some value discrepancy for a very brief moment that when the networking system sees it it just defaults values to zero.

Initially, I was trying to instantiate a new moving platform with the given SignalMathMul values. I then tried to just alter the values of an existing in scene platform with the script. This also appeared to fail at first, as the inspector showed a value of 0 again. With further testing, this setup does appear to actually set the internal input node value. This change is not reflected in the Unity editor, but when play testing it did change the behavior of the platform. Upon further inspection in the node graph, it could also be seen here that the value was actually being set to that given in the script. I then went back to use the exact same setup but with instantiation again, and this did not work still. Again, this just set the input to zero. I checked in play mode in the updating node graph, and this confirmed it was actually set to a value of zero.

I then tried instantiating the object, and then changing its input values. This created an instance of the prefab with its default values just fine. The platform was moving properly. This however did not update the platform values with the scripted values.

SOLUTION

Since none of these approaches with setting in2.value to a number were working, I checked the methods and variables available again and saw there was also an initialValue variable for the Node Input class. I then tried setting in2.initialValue instead with my instantiated platform and this worked as intended. The value was properly set (in editor as well as in the node graph) and the platform’s moving behavior changed accordingly. The resulting script looks as follows:
public GameObject movingPlatformPrefab;
private SignalMathMul signalMathMul;
private LinearJoint linearJoint;

private void Awake()
{
GOInstantiatePlatform();
}

private void GOInstantiatePlatform()
{
GameObject newPlatform = (GameObject)Instantiate(movingPlatformPrefab);

newPlatform.GetComponent().in2.initialValue = 1.2f;
}

I left the extra component references in for later if I need them, and I was doing the instantiation in Awake through testing in case spawning it “later” was doing something weird with the networking scripts. I tested running it in Start instead and this also worked just fine.

Pokemon Unity Tutorial – Player Movement [Pt.3]

digm520admin / / Programming, Tutorial, Unity
August 13, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

UI and Pokemon Class

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 3 Basic Pokemon and UI

By: BrainStorm Games

This tutorial covered the very basics of starting to get the UI setup in the game, as well as starting the overall base Pokemon class. The UI portion was just grabbing an image and setting it as the image for a Unity UI Panel. To help present the image in a certain way, they did go into the sprite editor to apply an all around 4 pixel border to the image.

The base Pokemon class started with two enums, this time for rarity and type. This class, BasePokemon, also references an outside enum that was created called BiomeList, which will set out the different types of environments a Pokemon can be found in. Other than these enums, the rest was just preparing the class by setting up a lot of the variables, like the Name, image, and all the stats (like hit points, attack, and defense).

Pokemon Unity Tutorial – Player Movement [Pt.2]

digm520admin / / Programming, Tutorial, Unity
August 13, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

Player Movement

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 2 Basic Player Movement

By: BrainStorm Games

Player movement in the overworld of Pokemon games is tile based. To emulate this, the tutorial uses a Coroutine which can move the player a full tile at a time while locking the player out from further inputs until the player character has completed its full tile of motion. It also uses a simple setup where it reads the player’s horizontal and vertical input, but checks which is greater and reduces the other to zero to ensure the player is moving only on the two intended directions.

Since the player is a 2D sprite, they used an Enum setup to tie certain sprites to certain movement directions. This way it would look like the character is facing the direction they are moving. This setup had the 4 directions (North, South, East, West) for the Enum Direction. The player’s input would set the Direction variable, currentDir, to a corresponding direction. This would then be referenced in a switch case to determine which sprite to display for the character’s SpriteRenderer at the time.

Top Down Movement in Unity Tutorial

digm520admin / / Movement, Programming, Unity
August 13, 2019

Unity Top Down Movement

Brackeys Tutorial

Youtube – TOP DOWN MOVEMENT in Unity!

By: Brackeys

This seemed to fit well with the Pokemon tutorials I was doing recently so I decided to give it a look. It’s been a while since I used Animator variables to control 2D animations so this was a nice refresher for that, but they also used Blend Trees which is something I had not seen before.

The initial script was very simple. This was a 2D Rigidbody setup, so it’s more physics based than the Pokemon tutorial I am doing. As usual for physics in Unity, they do the physics work in a FixedUpdate method, however, they still receive the input in a standard Update method. I always see you should do your physics in FixedUpdate to deal with frame rate variance, but had not seen anything specific about splitting up the input and physics into the two different Updates.

The Animator starts by adding two simple parameters: float Horizontal and float Vertical. The Blend Tree happens in a single state in the Animator for the Animator Controller for the player. When you right click and select “Create State”, you select “From New Blend Tree” instead of “Empty”. You can double click it to go one level deeper into this state node. It’s important to note the parameters apply here too, so they are useable throughout all the levels.

In this Blend Tree, there are three main factors to account for: the parameter, the thresholds, and the animations. You start with the parameter to check. You can then set “Motion Fields” which will hold an animation and parameter thresholds. It will then check the parameter relative to the thresholds set to determine which animation to play. This simple 2D walking animation set is a great example to show this off in a simple way, as it basically just switches between the 4 different directional walking animations depending on the combination of the horizontal and vertical parameters.

They then go back to the top level of the Animator to tie everything together. They make a transition from Idle to this Blend Tree, and vice a versa. This just makes sure to set a state for what to do when the player isn’t putting in any inputs.

Finally, to tie this new Animator setup in with the actual movement script and player input, they go back to the PlayerMovement script. The small addition needed here is simply setting the Animator parameters equal to the input gotten in the Update method.

Overall, this was a neat way to approach 2D movement in Unity a bit differently than I have before. The Animator blend tree definitely seems nice for keeping the PlayerMovement script cleaner and easier to read instead of cluttering it with a lot of input comparisons to determine different sprites and animations to use.

Using Coroutines to Control Animation in Unity

digm520admin / / Programming, Unity
August 12, 2019

Coroutines for Animation Timings

Unity

Youtube – Coroutines and Animation: Beyond Beginner Unity Tutorials

By: Tom coAdjoint

For a Unity project, I needed to control the flow of my program to process an animation fully before moving on to the next operations. Timing concerns normally lead me to coroutines, so I looked into controlling animations with coroutines in Unity.

The approach I ended up using for a quick fix solution was just to use WaitForSeconds in Unity. I basically just had the operation start the animation and then WaitForSeconds approximately the duration of the animation (which needs to be hard coded in at this point), and then continue with operation. While this works, it feels a bit clunky and hard to work with. For example, changing out the animation will require changing the time accordingly every time. Also different animations will need different values entered individually.

I came across this tutorial linked above which seemed promising for a better animation timer, especially for game building purposes. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of experience programming animation related objects in Unity, so I was not able to fully grasp how this setup worked. I need to look into the already available methods and variables Unity provides when working with the Animator and Animation more.

The main coroutine driving everything here is IEnumerator WaitForAnimation, which has the following setup:

IEnumerator WaitForAnimation(string name, float ratio, bool play)
{
var anim = animation[name];

if(play) animation.Play(name);

while(anim.normalizedTime + float.Epsilon + Time.deltaTime < ratio)
yield return new WaitForEndOfFrame();
}

The overall premise makes sense. You input an animation name, a ratio of how much of the animation you want to play, and a bool to activate it. It was unclear which variables were created by the tutorial and which exist in Unity already. animation[name] appears to be an array reference, but I am unsure if this is how Unity normally deals with animations or if this was created separately. normzlizedTime is also new to me, but that does appear to be a built in time of animation reference.

It will take a bit more researching, but this approach definitely seems to be more general and useful if I can determine exactly how it works.

Setting Up HFFWS Project

digm520admin / / HFFWS, Thesis, Tutorial
August 9, 2019

HFFWS

Setting Up Initial Project

Youtube – Human Fall Flat – How to make a map – Ranul

By: Ranul

So following this tutorial, the bare minimum for getting a level started is simply adding the “Level” prefab into your scene. This comes with:

  • InitialSpawnPoint: where the player spawns in; even has an indicator with a ray to show exactly where they will hit
  • FallTrigger: this is the trigger that determines when the player should be respawned
  • PassTrigger: the trigger for finishing the level (the goal)
  • Directional Light: standard directional light

It also sounds like “everything” needs to be childed to this Level prefab, so I’ll stick with that until I find otherwise.

Thrower Tutorial

Youtube – Spinning Thrower + Space Unity Tutorial for Human Fall Flat Workshop

By: Gotcha McFee

This tutorial shows how to use some basic tools that Probuilder affords you in Unity to make a moving, interactable object in your HFF level. This specific object is a “Thrower”, which is a spinning wheel that the player can hold onto then release to get launched to a new area from the wheel’s momentum.

Notes that the mass of objects makes a big difference in HFF in general, so modifying this can help if you aren’t getting the desired results. Generally objects start with a rigid body mass of 1, but in this example they set the wheel to a mass of 500. This significant difference shows you should be careful keeping track of your object masses so you don’t get issues just because you missed a very low mass value.

There are some notes on how to make a Probuilder object into a moving and interactable object in HFF. To allow it to move, there is an Entity Type under the Pb_Entity component that must be changed to “Mover”. To allow it to then be interactable, the Mesh Collider component needs to have the Convex option turned On. I noticed you could still interact with the thrower holders (just long cubes on the sides of the wheel) without changing anything, so it seems the Convex option is only important for moving objects.

Noted important factors for a wheel object:

  • (If Probuilder object) Pb_Entity – Entity Type – Mover
  • (If Probuilder object) Mesh Collider – Convex (On)
  • Hinge Joint component (automatically adds Rigidbody component)
  • Hinge Joint – Axis (Ex. 0, 1, 0)
  • Hinge Joint – Use Motor (On)
  • Hinge Joint – Motor – Target Velocity (Ex. 175)
  • Hinge Joint – Motor – Force (Ex. 500,000)
  • Rigidbody – Mass (Ex. 500)

Rope Tutorial

Youtube – Rope tutorial in Unity for Human Fall Flat

By: Gotcha McFee

This shows how to create a simple rope in the HFFWS from scratch.

The main objects needed as children objects of your overall rope object are:

  • Start
  • End
  • Rope

The Start and End are just Rigidbody objects with certain masses and constraints (want the start to be more solid and fixed where the end is more manueverable and flexible). The Rope holds a lot of the inner workings of the rope object.

Components needed for the Rope object within the overall rope hierarchy:

  • Rope (Script)
  • Mesh Filter
  • Mesh Renderer
  • Net Body (Script)(which has Net Identity attached as required component)
ISSUES

The tutorial shows how to add some objects like spheres and cubes to the rope object to give it an attachment point at the top and interactable objects at the end. I just wanted to quickly test adding the objects to hold onto on the end of the rope, so I just added a sphere as a child of the end and tried running the game. This caused the rope to glitch out and jump around violently. It appears that adding an object that has too much “rope in it” causes some weird collisions that just make everything move around erractically. I was able to get similar results to the tutorial by moving the sphere a bit below the end transform (without completely removing it visually from the end of the rope). This is just something to be aware of if adding to your rope.

PARAMETERS

The tutorial goes over some of their experience with the parameters of the rope script and results that have and have not worked for them.

Rigid Segments:
Having too many of these makes the rope too “heavy” and hard to use. You can change the individual segment weights as well, but too low of a segment mass causes the rope to “break” and become very glitchy. They generally make normal ropes have about 6 or 7 segments, with 15 being about the max for a very large rope.

Segment Mass:
The default value for this is 20 and that seems to be a pretty nice standard value. As mentioned previously, very low values break the rope and cause it to function incorrectly. The 15 to 20 range seems to be pretty consistent, but just make sure to test ropes with varying mass values if you are getting strange results.

Learning from Pokemon Unity Tutorial

digm520admin / / Tutorial, Unity
August 8, 2019

Unity Pokemon Tutorial

Setup

Youtube – Lets Make… Pokemon in Unity! – Episode 1 – Basic Setup World/Character

By: BrainStorm Games

As a big fan of Pokemon, I wanted to finally jump into this tutorial just to learn from what it has to offer. It could be very helpful for any 2D projects, especially those that are more RPG-based, and I imagine a lot of concepts can be carried over to 3D projects as well.

I am especially interested to see:

  • How they perform the movement in a way that’s consistent and easy to control
  • Setup of the overall “Pokemon” class structure to deal with many different options of very similar creature objects
  • How they deal with encounters (and the implementation of randomness)
  • Connected to points 1 and 3, how they structure the overall class for encounter areas
Using Tiles

Sometimes tiles can have a line between them even though they are connected, but this is normally caused by anti-aliasing. This can be turned off in the quality settings in Unity. Newer versions (I’m using 2019.1.12 currently) seem to have that disable initally in 2D projects.

Since we’re using tiles that are generally positioned pretty precisely, I thought this would be a good time to use Progrids again. This is perfect for continously placing all these tiles in exact incrementally different locations right next to each other. It is a bit awkward that the tiles get placed onto the intersection points of the grid as opposed to filling in the nicely made grid squares, but that’s just an aesthetic pain. It functions perfectly for this.

You can also achieve a similar effect to Progrids just normally in Unity by holding [Ctrl] while clicking and dragging to move an object. This can move the object one unit at a time.

Human Fall Flat Workshop Resources Updated

digm520admin / / HFFWS, Thesis, TutorialList
August 7, 2019

HFF WS Resources

Links to Useful Information

I am getting back into some HFF WS editing for my thesis project, so I gathered a lot of resources together on how to work with it, how the updates change things, and a few tutorials for putting some objects together. I compiled this list of resources while I downloaded the updates, added the new WS package to the Unity project, and updated all the prefab icons in editor to make everything nice and easy to use once I finally started putting a scene together to test things out.

Steam HFF WS Help

[NEW] Human Workshop: Features, Multiplayer Support and Backward Compatibility to 1.2 Alpha2

[NEW] Human Workshop: Example Workshop Levels, Templates and Prefab Testbeds

[NEW] Human Workshop: Editor Improvements and Node Graph System

[NEW] Human Workshop: Post-Launch Fixes, Updates and Additions – v1003292

HFF Tutorials

By: Gotcha McFee

Rope tutorial in Unity for Human Fall Flat

Moving Platform Tutorial in Unity for Human Fall Flat

Unity Controlling Coroutines

digm520admin / / Programming, Unity
August 6, 2019

Controlling Coroutines

More Advanced Coroutines in Unity

Youtube – Unity3D – 2 Ways to Start & Stop Coroutines (the good & bad ways)

By: Unity3d College

Youtube – Unity3D – Using Delegates / Actions as Callbacks in Coroutines

By: Unity3d College
1st Tutorial

This first tutorial is one I’ve looked at before, and it makes more sense now when I want more accurate control of a coroutine in Unity. Basically you can create an IEnumerator variable that can just hold the coroutine you want to run. This same variable can be checked for being null as a way to determine if it is already running, which can be helpful to ensure only one instance of the coroutine is running at a time.

This also suggests a different approach than normal for creating a more accurate timer in a Unity coroutine. Instead of counting a timer up or down with Time.DeltaTime, they set a float value to Time.time when the coroutine is started, and then check if difference of the current time (Time.time) and that set start time is greater than your intended timer value.

2nd Tutorial

This was a bit more advanced, and I need to look more into Unity Actions to fully understand how this works, but I think I got the general concept. It appears the basic premise is using an IEnumerator which takes on a method (methods) as a delegate input to ensure that a certain step is completed before running the input delegate (method(s)).

For example here, they wanted to replace an image but they wanted to ensure that the www object was obtained first to use for that method. Since a delegate was used, they also showed the flexibility of how the same foundation could support different methods.

What I am a bit confused by here, is how the ReplaceImage method that is set as the delegate in the LoadImage IEnumerator gets its input. It requires an input of Texture2D but I don’t see if or how that is set. I believe this may be my lack of knowledge on either Actions or Delegates in Unity, so I’ll need to look into that.