edited January 2016 in General Discussion
One of the best things I've gotten out of being a part of this community, apart from gil's outstanding help, is that we share information and try to help each other.

So I'd like to know what you think are the most useful assets in the Unity asset store that you've used that work well with ORK in your experience--and in turn, I'll post my experiences with assets I've used. Some people like certain assets because they are what you might call "Industry Standard"--assets that work on PC and Mac to make a marketable game. I'm interested in those but also generally in useful assets.

I just bought the Relief Terrain Pack as it's on sale and it was on my wish list--my terrains are very important to me--I like open world exploration--so will give it a shot and report how it works out for me.

It would also be interesting to know what anyone has found to be a good substitute for the more pricey assets, like Unistorm--someone posted a simpler alternative in a different thread that is very interesting.

Is there a good alternative to Opsive's controller?

And how has everybody been satisfied if they bought something like the Dialogue System--does it work for you--do you have any trouble getting it implemented with ORK?

Just recently went there too--trying it.


Post edited by Catacomber on
  • Hi, when I said "industry standard" tools, what I meant was high-profile assets aiding true marketability on the cutting edge desktop Win and Mac indie gaming scene.

    Under its hood, ORK is clearly the best "tool" of its kind, in fact it's one of the few things that makes the Unity asset store still rise above the Unreal4 marketplace and its crowd. But ORK's complexity and relative obscurity is a mixed blessing because some of the "industry standard" assets (e.g. Inventory Pro, UMA2, Chronos, NodeCanvas, CoreGameKit, SectR) don't make it a priority to support it officially.
    That's why the recent Playmaker+ORK bridge from our friend TanoHmz was a such milestone that too few of us seem to appreciate at this point. :)
  • edited January 2016
    @Catacomber - As far as terrain is concerned, I've had tremendous success with two products:

    1.) A procedural terrain creation tool called World Machine. It's not a unity asset but it's relatively inexpensive for what you get - $99.00 for the basic edition which is what I use. You can export your height maps, flow maps etc. for very intense results.

    2.) Terrain Composer which is a Unity Asset. This gives you a powerful set of tools to splat your terrains as well as procedurally place your grass, trees etc. so it's looks very natural. I can't recommend it enough.

    Terrain Composer also supports the RTP (Relief Terrain Pack) shader that you mentioned in your post. The author of Terrain Composer also has a procedural terrain creation asset called World Composer but I've not tried it yet. IMO if someone wants to make solid, professional terrain, those tools are very good place to start.

    Just my two cents :D
    Post edited by Squeaker on
  • edited January 2016
    Terrain Composer is on my 2016 shopping list. :)

    @Gregorik--maybe there will be more bridges this year.
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • edited January 2016
    There is an interesting Maze Generator am looking at--QMaze--a recent update to Unity broke my favorite dungeon generator--the developers just gave up. I'm working with my limited C# skills to restore its usefulness-almost there. : ) But QMaze looks very interesting.
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • UniStorm - latest version is much better as it makes it easier to "manipulate" from script. I've not seen any performance issues.
    Downside- it can be a pain to setup the 2 camera system (one for the sky and one for everything else). I had it working; but, latest version killed. So, back to a one-camera setup.

    UFPS - Not really necessary. I use it for the footstep manager that comes with it (per texture footsteps). If you are not a programmer, it would provides a great FPS camera setup. Never used any of the other systems within it. (Picked it up when it was $10 for my son to use; ended up using it myself :))

    Suimono Water System - Nice water system; royal pain in the butt to get running at a decent FPS on my Geforce 650 :). Also, had lots of troubles getting it running with UniStorm.

    To be honest, if I had the time to learn shader programming, I wouldn't be using UniStorm or Suimono. If UFPS hadn't been on sale and my son interested in doing something, I never would have bought it as I already had a nice FPS controller working for my needs.

    As for ORK, there are times I have considered to stop using it lately. It's getting too big for what it started out doing. (GIL please don't take this the wrong way) Lately, every new version has broke something that I had working in the previous version. But, it does save a lot of time coding up the systems and GIL is really responsive to issues.
    If I was looking at making an RPG and didn't have time to code up a framework OR unable to do so...ORK would be my first purchase! (I didn't want to code up a turn-based system when I was looking at the OUYA; thus I bought it.)

    Those are the only third party systems that I am using currently.
  • edited January 2016
    It's late for me, right now, but I want to add some comments to this topic.

    When you consider the 3rd party controllers, Opsive's TPC and Ootii's Motion Controller 2, you might want to consider the other integrations.

    Opsive's TPC, with its Ork bridge (that only supports movement for now) integrates with Opsive's Behavior Designer (behavior tree for ai) that is highly regarded. Love/Have which claims to integrate with Ork, is also supported by Behavior Designer. So you could run your NPCs with Behavior Designer ai, and if you use Love/Hate instead of Ork's factions, you could do Love/Hate faction checks in Behavior Designer trees. I believe there are also Love/Hate Ork steps provided by Love/Hate, so you could use Love/Have faction checks in Ork events. Whew..

    What remains to be seen is whether Opsive completes Ork integration. He is willing but needs an Orkanite to help him out, because he does not have the time to figure our Ork on his own. If you look at the TPC demos, they have a lot of actions built in, weapons and swimming even. If fully integrated with Ork, it would be pretty cool.

    Ootii, has Motion Controller 2 which is doing ladders, vaulting, sprint, narrow beams, and other cool actions. If you get MC2 it includes Action Controller which is Ootii's built from the ground up replacement for Unity's character controller. Ootii also offers the Adventure Camera, so his Action Controller, Motion Controller and Camera rig all work together. You don't need his camera rig, but it offers more features that you may desire.

    If you go the Ootii rounte, you can buy Node Canvas, which supports MC2, Playmaker and Inventory Pro, and have graphical State Machines and Behavior Trees.

    All of these assets are reaching maturity right about now, and its actually a very exciting time to be doing 3rd party (or 1st) RPG. You have options, and you can pick and chose. I'm in the process of figuring out Opsive or Ootii. They both are pretty cool, and expandable.

    I also have used, Instant Good Day, All Sky, Animated Flags, Herd Sim, Mister Necturus' horseman animations (yeah, I wrote a basic horse mount Ork event), QHierarchy (I love in my Unity editor). All work with Ork.

    @Catacomber, consider Gaia - Terrain Creation, Texturing, Population as an alternative to Terrain Composer. Both are powerful.

    Nite all.




    Post edited by Wood on
  • edited January 2016
    @keyboardcowboy--I know as a programmer, you appreciate all the work gil's had to do to get us the working changes to ORK that sync with Unity's recent changes. I think a lot of the changes we've have had to deal with lately stem from the fact that Unity changed quite a lot in the last few months, not to mention year. They broke a lot of my assets--

    I'm so appreciative of how gil's kept up with Unity's changes. We don't see the backend---the immense work it must take him. I'm sometimes in awe how fast we get fixes.

    As far as ORK growing. . . I like that-- : ) When I think of all the things that the Framework does that the ORK RPG Kit couldn't do---it's so much better. I can't really complain about how it's grown because I've made use of it.


    @Wood--I'll look at Gaia. Thanks. : )
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • Apart from player and camera controls, and fancy stuff that makes our levels and game design look cool, I will add to this post three tools I have in my arsenal in order to help increase the FPS rate of proto-games I´m working on.
    1) Sectr Complete, which helps with the occlusion culling even in large terrain.
    2) Super Level Optimizer and Mesh Merge and Splice, with this tools you can create a single texture map out of several meshes in order to improve performance.

    IMHO there´s no point of having cool weather effects, a big realistic terrain if at the end you can not get a decent frame rate.
  • I 100% agree with you about the cool weather effects and terrain if you're on mobile. It has to work.

    I think those who favor Unistorm and some similar assets are probably targeting PC and Mac and Steam and Gog. I know Unistorm has a mobile version but I think it got some not exactly stellar comments so far.

    Am looking at Sectr--it's really interesting--and will look at the other assets you posted. Fps rate is particularly a consideration on mobile.
  • edited January 2016
    I just want to add some thoughts about "marketable games" and "industry standard" assets and the PC and Mac and Steam and Gog markets.

    While I enjoy using Unity and ORK and 3d, I'm still using an old 2007 2.5d engine to make expansions for Redshift's The Quest game on mobile in the Apple asset store. I have made and still make a nice, steady income from my fifteen expansions using that ancient editor as does my partner and a woman who does a lot of writing--since 2007--8 years. So I'd say those are marketable games.

    Now Redshift who made the Quest engine has expanded this old engine to use hi-res graphics and the new hi-res Quest is on Steam--you can google The Quest Steam--it looks like my 15 expansions that were made for the Quest are going to be ported to Steam. That's nice.

    I still want to make new Unity games with ORK however so I'll balance everything. And if an ancient 2007 editor can succeed with tweaks on Steam I don't see why Unity and ORK-made games can't, and why you'd need a lot of expensive assets that might not play well with ORK. You would need good graphics and ui and music and sounds.

    Steam players have played a lot of games and they have certain standards--so that anybody wanting to satisfy them has got to develop for them. Redshift has had to work really hard scripting to do that to make their old 2.5 editor made long ago in 2007 make Steam users happy. Somehow they do it.

    http://steamcommunity.com/app/428880

    It just struck me that if you want to make a marketable game for the PC and Mac market---as much as you want to integrate cutting edge Unity assets--it's important to be able to work with Gil for new features for ORK or anything a Steam or Gog user might ask you for if your game is there.

    You are going to need his help much more than cutting edge assets- unless you can do it yourself---cause he's your programmer unless you can do it yourself.

    In all the talk about getting these often rather expensive assets to work with ORK, in cases where it's not easy----it might be better just to ask him how to do what they do that you think you can't do. First.

    : )

    I know this doesn't apply to something like a controller--but ORK already has a way to import most controllers--

    And it doesn't apply to things like terrain designers and skies and all that.

    But when you're talking about dialogue systems and inventories and anything similar--I'm not sure you don't already have what you would need or you can ask for a way to add that. I'm a little disappointed having bought the Dialogue System and Inventory Pro. I have a lot of things on my Wish List I could have bought instead that would have been more productive and fun for me. Just my thoughts.

    You might think you need something more than what you have--but you really need only what Steam or Gog players want. And what that is you won't really know until you have a game there.

    And then you have to be able to offer it to them in a timely way.

    The only timely way guy I know is Gil. : ). He's our programmer.
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • Wow havent been here in a while anyways ive tried alot of stuff with ork i use to buy anything that look like it might help me when i first started out with game development. from ufps to Suimono Water System, unistorm terrain composer ect. most stuff can be integrated easily. my problem is that once u get into to development you start getting stuck cause u want to do things a certain way that easier and more streamlined(no offence gil) it get aggravating since u cant do certain things. so i learned to code. and TBH ill never go back using pre-made kits. Dont get me wrong Ork is a amazing framework but it still has limitations when u get really involved with development. but as of now i work as a programmer thanks to ork. not only do i work on my own project but i now work as a lead coder in the development of a multiplayer game. anyways getting off topic. if you want to use something with ork there a 90% chance it will work out of the box . somethings might need a bit of work to integrate but if ur a none coder you can easially pick up makinom to be the go between.
    new website can be found here http://www.fore-loregames.com

    Follow the game Development on Twitter https://twitter.com/Fore_Lore_Games

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  • @cat
    Oh, don't get me wrong. I truly appreciate GIL'S efforts in keeping up with unity and adding community requests. I never worked with ORK I to compare. ORK is still a great framework to work with. So much so, i stopped thinking about going back to my old RPG project (my code base). The event system he put together is just brilliant
  • edited January 2016
    @Squeaker---I really like World Machine--downloaded the free version to try it out and it creates awesome terrains. The tutorials are very helpful.
    Post edited by Catacomber on
  • Catacomber said: it's important to be able to work with Gil for new features for ORK or anything a Steam or Gog user might ask you for if your game is there
    Yes and no: I don't want to burden an already overworked GiL unless really necessary. :) Also, I suppose it's a much lesser effort to code 'official' ORK bridges to these evolved assets than to grow their homebrew ORK equivalent. For instance, the DialogueSystem+ORK bridge is flawless, courtesy of PixelCrushers.
  • edited January 2016
    I don't think Gil knows what being overworked means. : ) He seems to like the challenges of keeping up with all Unity's changes and adding features and answering all our questions even when he's already answered it 20 times before.

    I also think he likes helping people and that he's available for commission work if any of us need it beyond the regular helping. I think he knows when he has to draw the line between helping for free and charging. I think we know that too.

    I'm just saying that if you have a game on Steam or Gog, it may be that what a bunch of players want is not going to be helped by any bridge of any kind. Then you need Gil and his kindness and hard work.

    If you're stuck with having to come up with a coding solution for the 'official' ORK bridges--and the bridgers don't know what to do, who are you going to call on to help you?

    You'd be surprised what a Steam player could do to pick holes in PixelCrushers' dialogue system--and to ask for addons and then who is going to do the fix? Or the addition? I was just looking at a long blog by a developer who wanted to add something to the Dialogue System so players could mod their own quests.

    The ios market isn't so demanding but the PC market is very demanding. Look at the Community Hubs of some Steam games and the discussion threads. It's brutal.



    Post edited by Catacomber on
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