I think I speak for a few people when I say I would like to see a comprehensive tutorial about how to approach a first person RPG in ORK.

My project is specifically supposed to incorporate most if not all aspects of System Shock 2, so I would like to see how the existing feature set can accommodate a complex HUD, mapping weapons to numbers, switching between interact and shooting modes, real time combat implementation, vision cones for enemy AI, deterioration of weapon quality and repair of broken gear, looting bodies for supplies, etc. Here's an example of the game in practice.

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One of the reasons I bought ORK was the support of a first person player, so I would like some pointers on how to approach a title in the FPRPG genre. Even seeing how to approach more of a Bethesda style game would be much appreciated.

Thanks for making this asset GiL, I feel like I can realize my vision with this tool. Now I just need some help getting there.
  • I second this for sure!
  • edited January 2016
    It would be wonderful if Gil would have the time to do this kind of tutorial. I certainly would have been happy to have it when I began working with ORK as I use first person and real time combat.

    If you work through the existing tutorials, you can get something working and then ask questions here and those of us who work with first person and features like you're looking for might help you. You can have a complex HUD, nice inventory system, map weapons to numbers, real time combat, deterioration and repair of items, looting bodies for supplies. Vision cone I don't know exactly what that is so not sure.

    But I see the value of having a tutorial like that if you're just starting with ORK.

    : D
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • Hi Catacomber,

    Thanks for the offer for help, I actually saw your posts here at the forums after searching tirelessly online for an example of how to approach this game. I don't really understand how to approach utilizing the tools to accomplish that sort of end result as of yet, but I'll do what I can to figure it out.

    Thanks for the friendly welcome. Are you using UFPS for your player? Any examples you can post from your project on how you accomplished certain aspects of gameplay?
  • edited January 2016
    Hi--I don't want to obscure the fact that you're asking Gil for a tutorial.

    I don't use UFPS for my player. I am going to look into it because some of the games I've made with a very old 2.5d editor take place in outer space and to make similar games in Unity--a first person shooter is more realistic than just a dungeon crawler. I do own a very nice asset by Mr. Necturus that is a gun. : ) And someday I'll learn how to shoot it. There are threads here about guns and bullets.

    I generally make first-person dungeon crawlers, with quests and open world exploration, using swords and spells to fight monsters. I build for ios right now--although I now also do a PC build because some of my testers play only on PC--I don't know what platform you're targeting.

    My first person controller is an asset I bought from the unity asset store and uses an on-screen arrow map--left, up, down, right arrows--to navigate on ios because my ios players are comfortable with that. When I do the PC build for my PC testers I use left, right, up, down arrows and keys. If you're targeting PC, you want to use the arrows and keys.

    I use the basic ORK camera but you can add a third-party camera asset if you want.

    I think UFPS is great from videos I've seen and I think someone here --wtyson--was able to get it to work with ORK---but you don't necessarily need that to make a first person shooter with ORK. Best place to contact wtyson is at his website.

    I'm currently betatesting a new game I made with an old, old, ancient 2.5d editor I've been using for the past eight years so my time to post examples of things is very limited. I'm doing that not because I don't love Unity and ORK and not because I don't want to finish the recent game I started with Unity and ORK ---but because my old players beat me into submission--they want one more expansion out of the old, ancient game The Quest and so I gave in.

    But I can answer questions from how I set things up in Unity and ORK to make a first person game.

    Why don't you start following the already existing ORK tutorials and spawn your first person player using whatever asset you want to use--whether it's ORK's control system or something else.

    If you own UFPS, use assets from it--but just try to get your game going with ORK to start off with. It will teach you what you can do with ORK without using extras. I personally prefer to add as few addons as I can to Unity because I shudder when I think what will happen if anything breaks in all of them.

    Make the simple HUD which is not bad--but you can customize it--add an inventory--try a small battle---

    And then ask. : ) I have a game I can look at the settings of and tell you what I did. I learned a lot by just doing the tutorials. The tutorials are actually pretty thorough.

    I also learned a lot by trial and error. I learned a lot by asking Gil here and sending him my lame files--and he always helped me fix things--to the point where I had a real game----so that's why I think that if Gil ever has the time to make a tutorial like the one you're looking for that would be great--for him too because I tortured him with questions and he always was very patient in answering them.

    Get your player out there -- give him or his team something to fight---and then ask how to get the fight going if you need more help than the existing tutorials give--there's really a lot in the existing tutorials--just ignore the turn-based battle tutorials.

    Get your player to interact with the world.

    I think there's now a good tutorial for making a hotbar--I think I did something with that in some tutorial--but I used spells--it would work the same for weapons.

    I started with ORK 1 so I had to do the tutorials for the ORK framework--they taught me the basics and with the help of people here and Gil's invaluable help I accomplished a lot.

    I'm weak on using the formulas--I realize that's something I have to learn more about. ORK is a very powerful game framework and you can do what you want to accomplish but you have to do the legwork of learning through the basic tutorials. : ) If you master those, then building on them is easy.

    I didn't find them tedious at all because I made something come alive in my game each time I finished a tutorial. It was very exciting. : D

    It was even more exciting to accomplish on top of the tutorials what I wanted to do--but that took asking questions here and getting help. The help is here so you don't have to worry about that.



    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • You are definitely right about that, I would prefer to ask questions when I feel more informed about ORK as a means to an end.

    I'll do the tutorials for each section as you suggested and go from there, and the custom scripting doesn't seem too difficult to grasp utilizing the tools provided.

    I'll check out some of your projects when I have some time, I went on your website and they look pretty awesome, I love the idea of first person RPGs on iOS.

    Excited to be working with an asset where people are friendly, oftentimes I have had bad experiences with assets like this, mostly flippant answers from jaded people who don't remember what it's like to develop their first game.
  • edited January 2016
    There's nobody here like that. I remember how I cried when I couldn't place a door and enter and exit a house when I first started making games using an ancient editor.

    I was fortunate to have someone help me then and I think all of us here want to help. I think all of us were there once.

    Besides, gil knows what you're going through when you are developing your first game and he won't let you down.

    And the tutorials are really very good. You have to look at them all--except the turn-based ones, unless you want to go there. : D I did go there and found it to be satisfying but I like real time games most. Don't know what's wrong with me. : )

    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • I have plans for a new series of game tutorials for different RPG types (using the same basic status system). I'll just need some time to get everything going (models, etc.).

    The majority of your work with ORK is the same, independent of first or 3rd person view, top down or whatever style you want. That's simply depending on what control you're using and doesn't really influence most of the setup. You'd probably use more stuff like control maps and damage dealers/zones when doing a first person game - there are already game tutorials and gameplay tutorials covering those topics.
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  • edited January 2016
    adrianmarshall167 said: Are you using UFPS for your player?
    I'm trying to use it with ORK, as UFPS's features are peerless and not recreatable in vanilla ORK.
    No one but Wtyson managed to fuse UFPS with ORK successfully. He's a professional coder (unlike me).
    Post edited by Gregorik on
  • I would also like the additional documentation written by GIL. And since AdrianMarshall mentioned it specifically, I suggest the first one GIL prepares should be in the first person and HUD style of System Shock 2. I've played the game and I think such documentation would be helpful.
  • I'm using UFPS with ORK
    Not the full suite as I didn't need all the features.
    I can try and answer any questions you may have.

    I'm using it with turn based combat
  • I'm very excited about the upcoming tutorial series. I think the biggest combat inquiries have been first-person and Chrono Trigger.
  • keyboardcowboy said: I can try and answer any questions you may have.
    Great, thanks! Can you break it down point by point the way you tweaked Ork + Ufps so that Ork's system underlies Ufps's FPS interface? How do you mix and switch between the two interfaces in-game? I suppose it also involves a fairly long custom script.
  • First Question: Do you know how to code in C# (or any language)?
    I had to go into the UFPS scripts and change some code in order to get it to do what I want.
    For example, I only "turn" when I hold down the right mouse button instead of the default camera controls.

    I used the AdvancedPlayer prefab from UFPS and removed the components that I didn't need. I have an ORK event script attached to the prefab as well which checks to see if the party is drowning while underwater :)

    As far as ORK, I set the custom controls in the Base/Control tab as seen here imgur.com/IbQqcF9.
    I haven't had any issues between the two. A matter of fact, these two were easy to integrate.


    Specific UFPS components: I kept the Footstep manager, event manager and the controller scripts.

    Any specifics you were looking for?
  • keyboardcowboy said: First Question: Do you know how to code in C# (or any language)?
    I do. C# only (I dunno C++ or JS), but UFPS is C# only.
    I've been using UFPS for long (AdvancedPlayer usually), but it seemed to suppress ORK functionality when I tried to mix the two. A bridging script seems to be missing. As opposed to PixelCrushers' DialogueSystem which offers a neat package of UFPS scripts. Quote:
    "This package adds functionality to start conversations using UFPS's interaction framework, suspend UFPS gameplay during conversations, synchronize UFPS data between UFPS and the Dialogue System, and load and save games containing UFPS and Dialogue System data."

  • I'm glad to see everyone agrees with this topic. GiL, I'm excited to see how you approach the new tutorials, I'm working on the current ones and they're extremely informative and have provided a lot of insight into Unity I never understood even before ORK.

    I also want to thank keyboardcowboy for that extremely helpful post about adding your custom player, that is an incredible help and it gives me some ideas how to approach utilizing the UFPS player in my project.

    System Shock as a series is certainly one of the most influential and important experiences in gaming, and it can be seen influencing pretty much every immersive first person title since, alongside the rest of the Looking Glass library. I think an example of how to accomplish Shock 2's style of play could bring ORK to a whole new audience of people, and aid in bringing a somewhat dwindling hybrid of genres back from the vacuum of BioFallScrollLands clones.
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