Thank you for the very detailed answers. Once I make a payment on my PayPal credit I’ll pick this up (should happen while it’s still at the current price.)
I did want to add that Gameflow is not visual. The logic is done in the editors. It’s actually an approach I find works out well. After v1 of it comes out I should be able to extend it so that it works with CAT.
Oh shoot! My bad. It’s been a bit since I looked at the other visual scripting products and got it confused with FlowCanvas. Now that I look at it in the Asset Store, Gameflow is very close to CAT in terms of editor UI. So, if you found it handy, I’m sure you’ll enjoy CAT as well!
Because I thought Gameflow worked out much better than I expected, my interest was really piqued when I saw CAT. It may not be as pretty as Bolt (which does have a really nice interface) but it is a more efficient work flow, IMO (I’m not trying to knock Bolt - it’s a great product. Flowcharts just seem like more work than programming most the time to me.)
Hi sirgolan
I bought CAT-Game builder on wednesday from your website, and I had a quick look through it and saw the RPG demo. But I didn’t have time to examine the project closely as I am finishing up a game. Possibly showcasing an integration of Inventory Pro with CAT might be an idea at some stage.
I agree! You’ve got to manage whatever you’re trying to build plus keep things neat so it’s not complete spaghetti.
Awesome, thank you for the purchase!
Inventory Pro integration would be a good one! I should probably take a look at popular assets that would benefit from CAT integration and make a list to churn through as we have time. I’m happy to take suggestions as well! No promises on whether any specific asset will get integrated, but we’d like to support as many as possible since that only increases the usefulness. For the moment, though, we’re just concentrating on making sure the initial launch goes well and that there are enough tutorials and such available.
Well, GameFlow was released in Feb 2015 and CAT has just been released, so maybe you should say is CAT what is very close to GameFlow in terms of Editor UI. Not trying to hijack your thread, just an observation.
No slight intended. GameFlow seems like a great visual scripting tool. You’ve clearly put a lot of effort into it and it shows.
We put together an endless runner tutorial this weekend. You can watch it here:
Note that there’s a new Action in this video that requires version 1.02 which is currently in the review queue with Unity. I’ll update the thread when that’s available.
Unity just approved version 1.02, so that should be live now! There’s better support for 2D characters along with a new Action which mimics user input to a Player Controller or Camera Controller. There’s a few minor bug fixes as well.
For anyone who bought off the website, you can use the same download link to get the update. If you don’t have it, let me know and I’ll re-send it.
I plan to work on writing up a blog post on integrating existing systems into CAT today or tomorrow, and we’re still working on the tutorial videos for the Flappy Penguin example. Those should be out soon!
That’s pretty fast going. I’ll keep a lookout for the blog post.
Having watched some of the videos I am definitely convinced to buy this. Hopefully tomorrow if all goes well.
As far as tutorials, I’d really love to see some based on Pacman and Shoot 'Em Up style games (3D objects in a 2D perspective.) They would at least show some rudimentary AI and slightly more advanced game scenarios. More advanced AI is going to be a bigger challenge, I can understand that, but I’d be happy with basic AI (like you’d find in those two style of games.) Also, it would be nice to see how mecanim is handled with CAT.
So often assets that promise to help make game development easier (i.e. Visual Programming) begin to fall apart when the game is more than rudimentary. I am thinking that this asset would still keep the logic clean and easy to read and debug, but it would be nice to see how it comes together in something more practical.
Edited to Add: My tutorial requests might seem silly since I haven’t watched the infinite runner example yet and I’m sure the included demos would shed some light on how various style games are handled.
I’m glad you’re enjoying the tutorials! In terms of enemy AI, there’s a rudimentary one in the RPG example that comes with CAT. The enemy in there patrols until it encounters the player. Then it goes into pursue mode and follows the player around until it gets into melee range. Once in melee range, it attacks. If they player runs away, it goes back to pursue. That was actually pretty easy to implement. Though I wasn’t the one who made that particular example, I actually built out the AI for an RTS style game completely with CAT. If you want to get into some really complex behavior like having a weighted threat list, or choosing the best attack to do given the current circumstances, it might be advisable to build new CATs for that. Or wait for the RPG add-on.
I think a Shoot 'Em Up game might be a really good tutorial. Showing how to handle bullets in CAT would be useful, too. Actually, after just reading about ghost behavior in Pacman, that could be interesting as well.
This might help show some AI behaviors a bit too. Here’s the entirety of the Pursue state on the monster in the RPG example:
I can go through those pretty quickly. The top Conditional Action has a Current State Condition which checks if the RPGGameController (another State Machine) is in the Danger State, and if not, it changes it to that state with a Change State Action. Mainly, this just changes the background music from normal to danger.
Next, there’s a Looping Action which will run everything delay for 0.1 second and then repeat. Inside the loop is just a Conditional Action with a Proximity Condition which checks if the player is within 10 units of the NPC. If it is, then it has the NPC navigate (using navmesh) to the player. There’s some parameters which link the navmesh agent’s movement speed to an animation parameter on the NPC’s mesh object. If the player isn’t within 10 units (for example if they run away), it runs two Change State Actions. The first one puts the NPC back into the Patrol State, and the second one puts the RPGGameController back into the Running State which puts the music back to normal. Note the highlighted icon on those two Actions means they are “Else Actions” or actions that are executed if the condition fails.
That’s it. There’s also a Trigger directly on the State Machine that picks up when the NPC is in melee range:
Because it’s not in any State, it’s always active when the State Machine is active. This is just checking if the NPC is within 2 units of the player and if so, it switches to the Attack State.
Hopefully that sheds some light on AI behaviors!
Thanks for taking the time to respond. Very helpful information!
One of the benefits to a Pacman style tutorial is the behavior of the ghosts are each slightly different plus there could be basic path finding included (if using 3D in a 2D perspective the navmesh could be used but it’d be interesting see a more traditional implementation.) For the Shoot 'Em Up it would be the shooting and perhaps various attack patterns.
I know, I know. I sound needy. LOL. I am impressed with what I am seeing so far.
I bought CAT tonight and I’m going through the examples right now. I appreciate the variety of examples you’ve included. Next up I’ll go through your tutorials.
Yeah, I agree Pacman would be fun. From what I’ve read, their path finding is very simple and could probably be done directly in CAT. I did write a node based path finding system that integrated into CAT. It’s what this article was based on, and I’m working on a follow up to that article showing how to integrate that system into CAT. I figure I might as well just include that system in the next CAT release as well.
When you mentioned Shoot 'Em Ups, what game(s) were you thinking of in particular? That’s a pretty big genre.
Awesome! Thank you for your purchase! I just wrapped up editing part 3 of the Flappy Penguin video, but unfortunately we had to postpone recording the remaining parts until later in the week due to the snowstorm here.
Simple Galaxian clone and\or and a simple vertical shooter. Even if it’s a Space Invaders clone with random “swoop” downs like Galaxian.
Yeah, you guys out on the East coast are getting hit now. Stay safe! We’ve had the frigid -30 wind chills that have frozen our pipes but not much snow this winter (so far.)
