Infinite Runner Starter Pack

Infinite Runner Starter Pack

This asset has been deprecated.
Thanks for everyone's support throughout the years!

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The Infinite Runner Starter Pack is a feature complete toolkit for any game within the endless runner genre. It is the original 3D infinite runner toolkit on the Asset Store and appeared in the keynote at Unity's annual conference, Unite 2013.

The starter pack is designed to easily incorporate your own look just by swapping out prefabs. Scripts are written in c# and are optimized and well commented.

Features:

• Mobile friendly
• Touch / accelerometer controls
• Infinite object generation
• Object pooling
• Optional chase object
• Obstacles, coins, and power ups
• Attacks
• Appearance probabilities
• Appearance rules
• Object sections
• Track turns, curves height variations, jumps, and curves
• 3 slot track system
• Scene objects
• Store and missions
• Legacy/Mecanim animation support
• Fading curved vertex transformation shader
• Camera side view
• Custom audio
• Starting tutorial
• Coin collection animation
• Complete set of GUI screens
• Game Center integration
• Facebook and Twitter links
• Custom editor scripts

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Looks nice, don't forget to put a webplayer demo!

 

Thanks, I will definitely include a web player demo. I also want to record a few videos showing how you can easily customize it. It is almost ready to submit, just need to add a couple of final effects. I wanted to get this announcement post out there though since it is mostly complete.

 

Looks good. Is there any slide under or attack animations?

 

Looks great! I might have to check it out when I've got a bit more money.

 

There will be a sliding animation, but attacking won't be in the first version. Attacks definitely sounds like a good feature though so we'll put it in the first update.

Thanks!

 

This package was submitted to the asset store yesterday and is currently waiting to be reviewed. In the meantime, I've updated the first post with all of the relevant information.

You can play the web player version on on opsive.com. Overview videos have been created and are available on YouTube. Script documentation is available here.

 

Just had a look at the videos and documentation. Looks good. What price will it be?

Just wondering what your thoughts are on moving the objects towards the player vs having static objects in terms of physics costs (on mobile)?

 

Starting with $60. After it has been on the store and I've released an update or two I'll probably bump up the price a bit.

I think the benefits of not having any floating point errors far outweighs the cost of having to move a group of objects. If somebody is really good at the game and if it is the character doing the moving versus all of the objects around him moving then you would start to see objects not being positioned correctly. Granted, depending on the game most players will probably never get far enough to notice but there still shouldn't be a flaw in the design from the start.

If the game is slow I don't think it will be because of the physics. I profiled the included starter pack and attached the results below. The graphs show two ends of the scale - the upper end being an iPhone 5 and the lower end being an iPhone 3GS. The bumps in both graphs are caused by a turn. Looking at the overview, PlayerController.Update is at the top for both devices because it tells the infinite object generator that it has moved and then the infinite object generator actually moves all of the objects. If you ignore the percentages because they are relative, I don't expect the execution time to change throughout the game unless you change the number of objects that are spawned. So that number will be pretty constant.

Edit: See this post for the most recent optimizations profile

iPhone5


iPhone 3GS

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Just to keep everybody updated:

I've gotten a couple of emails asking when this starter pack will be available and I thought that it would have been available by now. I haven't heard anything from Unity yet and I just sent them an email to see if I can find out the status (the asset case number is 543776 if any Unity employees are reading this ).

Edit: heard back from Unity, they said to give it a little more time and that assets can take up to 10 business days to be approved. So it could still be a few days.

 

Unity just approved the starter pack and you can now download it from the asset store: http://u3d.as/content/opsive/infinite-runner-starter-pack

Here's what I am working on for the first update:
- Attacks
- An objectives system similar to that seen in Jetpack Joyride or Temple Run
- Ability to deterministically spawn the same obstacle right after another (for example if you want a row of 10 coins. it is already possible with the current system it would just take more work than it should)

 

hi..

purchased...and liking it..
changing the character is a breeze , also customizing appearances and probabilities is pretty straight forward..
immediate additions required from the developer would be
1:swipe to change slot.
2:coin generation is absolutely necessary, rows of coins, jewels etc..
3h..ability to turn only on turn trigger, it gets pretty upsetting when a accidental swipe bangs you into a wall.


am still understanding the kit further, will keep adding to this post..

regards
danneskjold

 

Thanks for the purchase!

Line 65 of InputController.cs has:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. playerController.turn(diff.x > 0 ? true : false);
3.  

Change that to:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. playerController.changeSlots(diff.x > 0 ? true : false);
3.  

You can then remove the call the entire "checkSlotPosition" method as well as the call to it. Now you'll need to figure out how you want to control the turns.

This deals with part of the new feature that I am going to add to the first update. Give me a few days to get it added and then I'll send you the updated version before the rest of the features are complete.

There are a couple of ways you could deal with this. Probably the easiest way is to add a trigger to each turn platform that has a script attached which tells the player controller if it can turn.

First add a trigger that is the size of the whole turn platform:


The attach the following script (named TurnAllowedTrigger.cs):

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3.  
4. [RequireComponent(typeof(BoxCollider))]
5. [RequireComponent(typeof(Rigidbody))]
6. public class TurnAllowedTrigger : MonoBehaviour
7. {
8.  
9.     private PlayerController playerController;
10.     private int playerLayer;
11.  
12.     public void Awake()
13.     {
14.         playerLayer = LayerMask.NameToLayer("Player");
15.     }
16.  
17.     public void Start()
18.     {
19.         playerController = PlayerController.instance;
20.     }
21.  
22.     public void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other)
23.     {
24.         if (other.gameObject.layer == playerLayer) {
25.             playerController.turnAllowed(true);
26.         }
27.     }
28.  
29.     public void OnTriggerExit(Collider other)
30.     {
31.         if (other.gameObject.layer == playerLayer) {
32.             playerController.turnAllowed(false);
33.         }
34.     }
35. }
36.  

You'll then need to add the private variable to PlayerController.cs:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     private bool allowTurn;
3.  

Make sure it gets set to false on Start and reset:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     public void Start()
3.     {
4. ...
5.         allowTurn = false;
6. ...
7.     }
8.  
9.     public void reset()
10.     {
11.  
12. ...
13.         allowTurn = false;
14. ...
15.     }
16.  

Add the method that the trigger will call:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     public void turnAllowed(bool isAllowed)
3.     {
4.         allowTurn = isAllowed;
5.     }
6.  

And finally make sure the turn doesn't turn if allowTurn is false:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.     public void turn(bool rightTurn)
3.     {
4.     if (!allowTurn)
5.         return
6. ...
7.     }
8.  

 

hi opsive,

thnx for the prompt replies...

Swipe to change slots done.... now to figure out how to turn left and right according to the swipw...
am now doing the turn trigger ... and will wait for the update with the coin generation ...

thnx again..will keep you posted on how it goes.

regards
danneskjold

 

hola ppl...and opsive..

thnx to you ...fixed the swipe to change slots.. turn only when near turn fixed... the changes you suggested actually made it simpler to incorporate...

regards
danneskjold

 

Great to hear!

Here's an Android package if you want to try it out on your device before you commit:

http://www.opsive.com/assets/InfiniteRunnerStarterPack/InfiniteRunnerStarterPack.apk

 

hello again,

does the kit have a progressive speed changing method or function? so as to magnify the difficulties in speed , obstacles appearance etc..
oh..and the levels you are using, can they be used ? did you guys built them ? then the next question would be ..do you guys also do custom level building ?


regards
danneskjold

 

There isn't a built in way to change the speed throughout the game. What you could potentially do is similar to the turn allowed trigger is setup a new platform that has a change speed trigger attached, then use the appearance probabilities to force this track to show up at specific times. Having said that, that is a difficult way to go just to change the speed. I am planning on having the row of coins feature done by the end of this weekend, and I'll build in a clean way to do this as well right from the player controller.

There is a way to increase the magnitude of obstacle appearances to increase the difficulty and that is done through the appearance probabilities. Take a look at the spikes duck prefab. It has two no occurrence probabilities setup. One from distance 0-500 with probabilities 0.95 to 0.88, and another from 500 to the end of the game with probability 0.85. What this is doing is that as the game goes on, it is decreasing the probability that this particular obstacle won't occur thus increasing the chances that it will appear and make things more difficult. Take a look at this video for more details on appearance probabilities: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_5eLrKgvc&list=PLCPL5IYZm1NKONPSoFtTKCE-d5SiZsb2m&index=2

Yes, anything included in the starter pack can be used in your own game. All of the assets were built for this starter pack.

At this point we aren't doing any freelance work, it is tough enough keeping up with all of the current projects going on

 

I just finished adding the ability to have a prefab which contains a group of objects. This allows you to have a row of coins right after another. It also gives you the possibility of having specific objects appear right after another without relying on probabilities or rules. If you want a set of coins to always appear immediately after the jump obstacle you can just create a prefab with both the jump and coins in it.

You can also now set the speed based on how far your are in the run. This allows you to run faster later in the game than the start. It uses the same system the appearance probabilities use so it is really easy to setup.

For anybody who has purchased the starter pack and would like to get these updates now just send me an email/PM with your receipt number. I am going to wait to submit it to the asset store until I have attacks and objectives done.

 

I submitted the update to the asset store yesterday. This new version includes:

• The character can attack obstacles
• Missions
• Variable speeds
• Collidable prefabs can contain other CollidableObjects
• Object movement optimization
• Scene prefabs center doesn’t have to be located at the true horizontal center
• Improved GUI

The original post in this thread has been updated and I am working on finishing the documentation. I've already sent the build to those who have contacted me about getting the previous version. If you've already purchased the starter pack and want this version now just send me your invoice number.

The object movement optimization really helped reduce the amount of time it takes to move all of the objects. I'll eventually write another post showing the improved profile.

 

How easy is it to change out assets to the game. looking to make an office environment where the runner would make it to the elevator to a different level and make his way down to a street level.

 

I need to do a video for how to swap out the prefabs but in the meantime I've written out the steps:

http://www.opsive.com/assets/InfiniteRunnerStarterPack/documentation.php#CreatePrefabs

Your office/elevator/street idea should be possible. What I would do is create the prefabs for the office environment, then when the player reaches the elevator there will be a trigger that would stop the player from moving. You'd wait a little bit to simulate the elevator moving and during that time you'd spawn all of the street prefabs. You won't be able to do all of this without any coding at all but it shouldn't be too bad. I can point you in the right directions if you need it.

 

What will be the next features for this asset?
Will it be possible to go up and down (maybe this is already possible with the shader for curvy roads/ways) or can we use i.e. a y cross-way or other not 90degree branches?

 

There is still an update waiting to be approved by Unity but beyond that I have only gotten a request to add Game Center.

You currently cannot dynamically change the height but that sounds like a good feature for the next version. To specify height now you'd have a set of different prefabs whose vertical position varies. It's not the best system but it would work. I don't think adding in height variations will be too hard to do.

Having something other than 90 degree turns would take more work than adding in height and I need to think about that more to have a clean implementation.

 

In the script, is there a way to customize the obstacles for each platform piece? For example, on a ground piece with a hole in the ground, you don't want an obstacle spawning on that hole.

 

Yes, right now you can control which slots (left, center, or right) the obstacle can spawn in as well as the number of positions that are on top of the platform. For example, if you have a platform which has a length of 10 and 2 positions, obstacles will be able to spawn about 3.6 and 6.7 units up from the start of the platform. You can change which slots are active as well as the number of positions for each platform. Are you wanting more control than that?

 

I just watched the video where you talked about that, and it's just what I was asking for!


I saw you talked about adding groups of objects. Can this be done with objects in multiple lanes, so you could have a group with an object in the left and right lane?

Last question here. Is there a way to make something similar to the trains in subway surfers? Like having a ramp up to something higher and then running on top of something, or would they be counted as obstacles and hurt you?

 

Yes, in that case I would create a prefab with objects on the left and right sides and mark the center slot as the only slot that objects can spawn on top of.

In theory that should be possible but I'll do a proof of concept tonight and let you know the results. I think it should be as easy as adding a collider to the obstacle and not enabling the trigger. I'll also need to set the layer to platform so it knows when the player is jumping.

 

Now it is running on my IOS devices

Edit:
Thank you opsive

 

I just had a chance to test my previous theory out - it works perfectly:

 

I played the web demo and I really like it but it's super buggy. On the tutorial I went out of the level and just playing a new game after a few deaths a wall blocked my screen.

 

Please go ahead and give it another try. I didn't know about the objects persisting after a restart bug so thanks for letting me know.. It should be fixed. I also tweaked a couple of things so you shouldn't go through walls. If you do end up purchasing the starter pack I can send you this fixed version before it is live on the asset store.

 

That's Fantastic! Great to see it works.

Is it required to have turns in the game, or can we let it just go straight the whole time? I usually prefer that type of runner.
Also, with the group objects, is the spawning determined by lanes for that too? For example if there are objects in all 3 lanes in a group, would this group only spawn on a floor with all 3 lanes open for obstacles?

I will probably be getting this soon. I've been waiting for one like this to come out for quite a while now.


I also got the bug where walls started going in front of my screen. Not a big deal as I assume it will be fixed.

 

No turns required. If you don't want your game to have turns then all you have to do is not include those prefabs.

The spawning of the grouped objects is determined by the lanes, however it does not take into account the placement of the objects within the group. So for example if you had a platform that allows objects to spawn in all three spots it may spawn a grouped object in the leftmost slot even though there is a child object offsetted to the left (thus making that child object not over the platform). In addition, it only spawns one object in each position. From my previous example of a platform of length 10, even though an object can spawn in the left, center, or right at position 3.6, only one object is spawned. This prevents overlapping whether an object is grouped or not.

What you can do to prevent to first situation where a grouped object spawns in a lane that it shoudlnt spawn in is use appearance rules to prevent the grouped object from spawning at all on that particular platform. Then youd have a duplicate platform prefab created that has the correct lanes setup and only that one grouped object can spawn on top of it. In fact, this would be a good feature to add in a future update to the appearance rules - the ability to select lanes that it can spawn on top of.

Are you still seeing it on the web player? I thought that I fixed that bug. You will still see the bug with the version currently on the asset store, I haven't submitted this update yet. Regardless, this bug was because of turns so if you don't have any turns in your game you'll never see it.

 

I'll see if I can still see it in the web player. It happened a few days ago.

To your solution for the spawning of groups, I don't really understand it, seeing as I don't have the pack yet, and I'm not a great programmer. I'm the artist in my projects

 

If you haven't watched it already, take a look at this video for an introduction for appearance rules and probabilities: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_5eLrKgvc&list=PLCPL5IYZm1NKONPSoFtTKCE-d5SiZsb2m

The starter pack includes a few editor scripts which allow you to determine when objects should spawn as well as any restrictions. One of those restrictions that you can add is the ability to prevent certain obstacles from spawning on top of certain platforms. If you have a grouped obstacle that takes up three lanes, you can then have a platform that only spawns obstacles in the center lane. Then you can then setup a rule to prevent that grouped obstacle from spawning on top of any other platform besides the one that only spawns obstacles in the center. That way the grouped obstacle will always be aligned correctly.

All of this can be added within the inspector and no programming is required so it should be really easy to do.

 

Found another bug. If you get the coin magnet, you're hurt by obstacles in all lanes. It may not actually hurt you, but it plays sound and shows the effect. when you run past an obstacle with it.

 

Good catch, I've fixed it and updated the web player. You can see how many collisions have occurred by looking the Game game object, then within the Data Manager there is a private variable called collisions.

If you want this version now feel free to send me a PM/email with your invoice number and I'll send you the download link. It'll probably be another couple of weeks before I submit this version to the asset store (right now it just contains bug fixes, I'd like to get some new features in there)

 

Unity just approved the latest version a couple of hours ago. It includes:

• The character can attack obstacles
• Missions
• Variable speeds
• Collidable prefabs can contain other CollidableObjects
• Object movement optimization
• Scene prefabs center doesn’t have to be located at the true horizontal center
• Improved GUI

Most of these new features are pretty self explanatory but I want to go into a little bit more detail about the object movement optimization. With the previous version, the Infinite Object Generator would move all of the active objects one at a time. With this latest version, there is a hierarchical system so it doesn't have to do as much work. The result is that less time is spent within PlayerController.Update().

Here's the most recent profiler on an iPhone 5 and iPhone 3GS. In both cases the quality setting was set to fantastic so you could even get more performance out of the lower end devices if you lowered that settings. The bump in both screenshots are when the player hit a turn and it had to show new objects.

iPhone 5


iPhone 3GS

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Are you taking suggestions on future updates? If you are, read on. If not, disregard my next paragraph.

There is one big thing missing for me. In this sort of thing, I would like to have transition pieces for different kinds of scenery. For example, maybe I have 2 different areas. A forest, and a house. I couldn't just plug the pieces for these into this code. That wouldn't work as they wouldn't transition into each other right. There would need to be a transition piece for forest to house, and house to forest, that is used when changing the piece to the different scenery. This could go on for having more than just 2 different types of areas. I hope I made sense in this. I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to do, but I'm an artist, not a programmer.

 

Somebody actually just asked for a similar feature yesterday. It sounds like a good feature and I will work on getting it implemented for the next update. I'll let you know when I've made some progress on it.

 

The latest version of the starter pack has just been approved. This update just contains some fixes:

• Fix: If the player died right after a turn objects would hang around
• Fix: Coin magnet trigger no longer causes collisions with other obstacles – need to add the “CoinMagnet” layer (see the readme)
• Fix: Power ups would cause a null pointer if it was maxed out

I have started to plan out the features in the next update. So far I am planning on adding the following:

• Different sections at defined distances, for example you could have an indoor section until distance 1000 followed by an outdoor section at distance 2000, and that could repeat.
• Variable height
• Game Center

If anybody has any others let me know. I am going to hold off for now on non-90 degree turns since that is a more major change.

 

What about holes in the ground,

a second character with other speed or jumping settings (you can use the same character with i.e. a green hat, just so we can learn on how to make other characters that the players can buy),

when the character dies he change to a ragdoll and not use the dead anim,

someone who hunts the player,

with gamecenter a marker that tells me how far my friends played this game,

 

Some good suggestions -

This should already be possible. You should be able to position the box colliders so there is a hole in the platform and the player will fall through it (you'd have to adjust your scenes to not have a ground either so the character would actually fall through).

I like it. That will also add a character selection screen and you'll have to use your coins to purchase the other character

Sorry I forgot that you mentioned this earlier. I should be able to get this one in a future update but I don't think that it will be the next one. I am personally actually planning on making a game that uses this feature so it'll definitely make its way into the starter pack

You mean by having enemies that shoot/hit the player as he is running by?

I haven't used Unity's Game Center API extensively enough to be able to tell how easy this is to do. I will look into it (it probably won't make the next update)

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

No, i mean more like a creature that hunt´s him from behind just like in other "famus" runner games
So a reason why he is running.

 

Wow, do you see this?

http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/188995-Greedy-Dwarf

Maybe if you look at this there are one or more future features that match your assets?

 

That has some pretty unique features. I don't think that it would be too hard to incorporate either the side view or the twists. Though I wonder if those features are general enough for a starter pack. If there are more requests for these features I'll add it to a future update.

 

Alright, I will be getting this pack this week.

How would you incorporate the twisting for a 3-laned running game? That seems a bit strange.

The only other feature I can think of is adding levels(height). Like, you can go up stairs and the pieces will match up. From what I can see of it right now, you can't.

This is a great pack you have going here! I'm surprised it hasn't been done much before.

 

You mean like the twisting in Greedy Dwarf? From a high level point of view you'd have to do a raycast from the player down (relative to the player). Get the angle at that point and rotate then rotate the character. If you still wanted to allow jumps you'd have to script in your own force since you won't be able to use Unity's gravity.

That will be in the next update. I am just finishing up with some bug fixes / minor features and then I plan on adding the appearance sections and height. I should be able to get those scripted pretty quickly it's just that it will take longer to get art that goes along with it.

Great to hear! As soon as you get it send me an email with your invoice number and I'll point you to the latest.

 

Regarding the different sections at defined distances. When the pieces change, are you allowing there to be a transition piece to go from one to the other?