Doing a specific type of cutscene and on dialog trees

aileigh37

I spent another day learning ORK and I am really glad I stuck with it so far! I have two questions, and I couldn't find any tutorials on the first one:

I want to do cutscenes. Is there a tutorial for this? Specifically, I want to start the game with a first person perspective, looking into a stream, watching a legacy animation loop. There is a clean cut camera shift to third person, with the player movement constrained, the camera a little to the side. An NPC on a route from offscreen wanders into the scene and stops at a navpoint, then delivers a line of dialog. Then there is a fade out cinematic and the user can control the player in third person, not constrained, the camera now behind the player as seen in the default follow ORK cam.

Should I be using the events to create something like this(multicamera/multievent cutscenes) on event Autostart? I'm not completely sure where to begin but I was wondering if this cold be possible without knowledge beyond tutorials and a little more ORK experience. I don't want to script directly with the ORK API. I tried that before with Opsive third person controller and will never do it again. I'll add that I can make the stream animation myself, but outside of that, am I really just manipulating cameras and using ORK events to initiate each step?

Secondly, I also want to create the sensation, during dialog, (not this event explained above, but throughout the game) that the camera looks directly at the speaker during conversation. This is best seen in Mass Effect. I am assuming I would just set up a camera per NPC that I talk to, do an event step before their line that zooms in on them to my desired perspective, and do a back and forth between my character and the NPC in this way. Please seen example, sans the facerigs..(

Dialog Trees. I thought about using Fungus. Just wonder if anyone has experience with that. OR, has anyone ever did something like have a private variable with relationship points or choices? I did see the dialog example in the tutorial, but I wanted to know someone else's experience handling long and complex relationship decisions in a game. I think there are a few tools out there like Love/Hate and some other thing by Pixel Crushers called Dialog System (?)(maybe), so anyone with firsthand experience, I am trying to use ORK to keep track of narrative and choices. What's my best bet?

Keldryn

For dialogue, your best bet is likely to be Dialogue System. Especially if you're going to have a lot of dialogue. It handles dialogue trees very well, and also integrates with different lip-sync and facial animation packages.

It's very widely used, has a ton of third party support, and Tony Li not only provides amazing support -- he's actively participating in threads all over the Unity forums. He really knows his stuff.

DS also has a built in Lua scripting feature, so you can define and run custom scripts right from individual dialogue nodes. His ORK integration handles syncing all of the DS variables into ORK. I believe it also has support for multiple camera angles during conversations.

I have his Love/Hate system as well, but I have yet to progress far enough in my own development to get a chance to work with it. I do know that like DS it has an excellent ORK integration.

As for cutscenes, you're probably best off with a dedicated tool, like Slate, Cinema Director, or the new Timeline in Unity 2017. You could certainly set them using ORK Events (no need for coding to ORK's API). But the workflow is likely to be more intuitive with a dedicated tool -- especially if you're coming from a background in 3D art/animation. In that case, you might launch the cinematic with an ORK Event.

I find that ORK is fantastic for handling the RPG mechanics, and there really isn't anything else out there that compares. It's pretty good with a lot of the more general game systems as well, but if you have something very specific in mind, you will often need to look at using a specialized tool to achieve what you want. I use ootii's Motion Controller & Camera Controller, NodeCanvas, and Dialogue System in place of the built-in character/camera controllers, AI, and dialogue.

And I just might pick up Slate, as it's 50% off right now (and it's by the same guy that created NodeCanvas and FlowCanvas).

aileigh37

@Keldryn Wow you have some great advice. This is really helping me understand what I should be considering, moving forward. I'm trying to understand the benefit of Dialog System within the scope of ORK. It does look like ORK has a dialog system of it's own, but you said DS is widely used. Do you think that's because it offers more control, or just because it's easier to work with [when using ORK]? I looked at love/hate, and I see it integrates with ORK, but do you think if adding DS to ORK, then Love/Hate on top of that would start to get too complex to set up, or is it very intuitive since Love/Hate seems to almost be an extension of DS? My background is not 3D art/animation, it's some programming and 2D art. In reality, I'm an editor IRL so my true background is in writing and publishing. I think from your post, I can probably accomplish my goals with DS and ORK alone, but may add love/hate if I can determine whether or not it will be easy to do ORK+DS+L/H...