Core GameKit! Pooling / Spawning / Combat

I'm sorry but I have no idea what you're talking about. In case it's not obvious, I've never made a game involving network or multiplayer

 

Hi,

Noob question I'm afraid, sorry about that...

Have trawled through previous posts for this but can't find what I'm looking for. If I understand correctly, I should be able to display onscreen (guiText) when a new level is started. I have found LevelSettings.CurrentLevel but I'm not sure when that gets updated. I notice that within LevelSettings.cs there is a coroutine that will accurately display Level and Wave number changes to Debug.Log (if logging is enabled).
However, when I try to display LevelSettings.CurrentLevel to screen, it seems to get incremented when a wave ends and not when a new level starts. I've managed to completely confuse myself over this - help!

 

Yeah, it is confusing. You will need to use things we built specifically for this.

If you want to display the level getting updated, use a LevelSettingsListener, the WaveStarted method. There, either a wave or a level started and you can grab the LevelInfo object that's passed in and display the level part if the wave number is zero. That means a new level stared.

 

I saw that you added a new Pooling System!
How is this new system compared to the PoolManager 5?

 

Haven't used Pool Manager 5. What's new in it? Comparing to Pool Manager from 1.5 years ago, we have pretty much all that functionality plus a couple extra time-saving things.

 

I'd like to know if your polling system has the following features:

1 - A pool may contain instances from more than one prefab (different prefabs in the same pool)?
2 - Limit the number of instances allowed?
3 - Make pools prefabs?
4 - Pool Audio?
5 - Pool ParticleSystemsw
6 - Does it support 2D Toolkit?

And what it this "Auto-Add Missing Itens" feature in your package?

Regards!

 

#1 - Yes, if I understand the question. You can put any number of prefabs I the same pool. Actually you can only have 1 pool though. I found that made things easier and less code to write and it could be smarter.
#2 - Yes, and it will actually log a warning if you try to make a new one of any prefab that's past your limit you've set (and haven't checked the "allow Instantiate more" checkbox.
#3 - Don't understand what you mean on this one.
#4 - Not specifically. Although you could always set it up using a Timed Despawner script and make your own prefabs for this. I would however suggest you check out our flagship product Master Audio. It's on sale for $30 right now and is the most popular audio plugin in the Asset Store.
#5 - Haven't done this yet, but again you can accomplish this with a Timed Despawner script. You just need to decide how long it waits to despawn. A single setting.
#6 - I don't believe a pooling system needs to *support* any certain plugin. It should "just work" with any plugin. That's always been my experience.

Auto-Add Missing Items from the docs:

Auto-Add Missing Items - checking this box will actually allow you to "half-pool", meaning that you can check the box and hit play without adding any Pool Items. What will happen is that nothing will be created up front, but Pool Items will be created
(Instantiated - bad for performance) as you need them, and can be reused. Also, any prefab that is in the Hierarchy (already in the Scene and doesn't need to spawn) will get despawned in to the pool when it goes away so you can re-use it later in that Scene. If
you do not check this box, any prefabs you try to spawn that don't have a matching Pool Item will instead log an error and nothing will spawn.

This feature also means you don't have to use a script like Pre-Spawn Runtime Item" script from Pool Manager. Check Auto-Add Missing Items and it will "just work". This is the case because there's only one pool allowed. So it knows to go back into that pool by default.

 

Thanks for your anwsers! Just bought the asset =)

About #3, what I meant was: Is it possible to create prefabs from pools? For exemple: After creating a very complex pool, can I make it as a prefab?
But as you said that there's only one pool allowed, I don't think it's possible.

 

No problem! #3 of course you can make a prefab out of it, but it will be of the entire LevelSettings prefab, which contains Pool Boss. I advise making prefabs out of everything that's in the Scene, it helps when working on multi-person teams so you don't always have to modify the Scene.

So the prefab will be for versioning purposes only, you won't be spawning that prefab ever.

 

How does this compare to Pool Manager (just comparing the object pooling functionality not the additional features).

 

That was kind of just asked (and answered) on this page a little further up. If you have additional questions, let me know. I'm using it as a direct replacement for Pool Manager.

 

I'm running into a null reference exception with this addon.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
UnityEngine.Collision2D.get_gameObject () (at C:/BuildAgent/work/d3d49558e4d408f4/artifacts/EditorGenerated/Physics2DBindings.cs:1100)
Killable.CollisionEnter2D (UnityEngine.Collision2D collision) (at Assets/Addons/DarkTonic/CoreGameKit/Scripts/Utility/Killable.cs:422)
Killable.OnCollisionEnter2D (UnityEngine.Collision2D coll) (at Assets/Addons/DarkTonic/CoreGameKit/Scripts/Utility/Killable.cs:418)

happens when my player and NPC collide. both have killable scripts and both should kill each other. however the NPC dies and throws the exception you see above. is this something i'm doing wrong or a bug in the addon? surely this can handle two objects killing each other?

EDIT: okay i found the problem. its with the 2d physics system. please make sure errors like this are ironed out before you say 'Support for Unity 2D collisions and triggers!' on your asset page...

 

We are not going to retract our 2d support statement, we do indeed have full support for 2d physics. What you are seeing is actually a Unity bug with the 2d system. Nothing we can do about it. We can't even add logic to show a nice error instead. That's how bad a bug it is.

However, it has been fixed by Unity after we reported it, and it will be available in the next Unity update. They will not give us a date for that though.

Sorry for the trouble in any case. I hope the new Unity version comes soon.

 

perhaps a little warning then as this is a major problem with the system (I'm sorry its out of your control). there are too many conditions for two objects killing each other for this to be ignored on the page. i dont mean to be a nag but it needs to be clear on the page that that bug exists(until the next update) as it could make the addon useless to many people. therefor having them buy something without getting what was advertised. i know i sound like i'm being an ass but features should be as advertised even if its out of your control to fix them.

P.S. to be clear i like the addon alot .

 

I can put something in the OP in of this thread if you like, but an Asset Store page is not really a place to list known issues or Unity bugs. I can also post a sticky "known issues" in our support forum here: http://darktonic.freeforums.net/

Will that work for you?

 

that would be a good. otherwise great addon. speeds up combat design a ton.

 

Thank you, I'll go do that now

 

Core GameKit V3.2.1.5 will be live in 20 minutes. Changelog:

• Changed "no copies left to spawn" message in Pool Boss to a warning instead of error logged.
• Redid the code for Timed Despawner. Now it is many times more efficient, no script is run during Update.
• Added methods and properties to Pool Boss: PrefabIsInPool, PrefabCount
• Note: Please delete your Core GameKit custom actions folder before importing the newest one, if you unpacked the optional included Playmaker package.
• Added Playmaker custom actions for Pool Boss: Spawn, Despawn (renamed Core GameKit Despawn action), PrefabCount, ItemIsInPool, ItemTotalCount, ItemDespawnedCount, ItemSpawnedCount

 

The Dialogue System for Unity v1.2.3 is now on the Asset Store. It includes Core GameKit support that makes it easy to drop in interactive branching conversations, barks, and quests that control waves, spawn enemies, and more. If you got the Dialogue System when it first introduced Killer Waves/Core GameKit support, please look over the Release Notes and update your copy. A lot of great new features have been added!

 

Even better now, thank you. I love the way these two work so well together. We use many of the third party apps that work with these two.

 

Thanks Tony! Great product! Currently, on our next game, we're integrating Core Gamekit and Physics Platformer Kit. Together these can do TONS. Throw in Dialogue System as well and the possibilities are staggering!

 

Just started using Care GameKit, great product!

Also like the concept of the mothership and LeftBay/RightBay for launching more enemies.
However, when launching the child enemies from LeftBay/RightBay, it seems thatthe "Wave Offset" does not follow the direction of the spawner for the position to spawn, but world coordinates instead. For example, I rotated the LaunchBayR Y 180 degrees and gave both LaunchBayR and LaunchBayL a positive X "Wave Offset" but the Wave Offset was always at the same side of the mothership. I need to the "Wave Offset" to follow the direction of the spawner, for example when the mothership or child spawner has a rotation

So I made a little change to the following code in the public class TriggeredSpawner.GetSpawnPosition(Vector3 pos, int itemSpawnedIndex, TriggeredWaveMetaData wave):

protected virtual Vector3 GetSpawnPosition(Vector3 pos, int itemSpawnedIndex, TriggeredWaveMetaData wave)
{
var addVector = Vector3.zero;
var currentWave = wave.waveSpec;

// original code
// addVector += currentWave.waveOffset;

// Changed RdB
addVector = new Vector3( transform.right.x* currentWave.waveOffset.x,
transform.up.y*currentWave.waveOffset.y,
transform.forward.z*currentWave.waveOffset.z);


Hope you can include this in a next release

 

Hi jerotas, i just started using Core gamekit and messing around with the pooling system and killable script, i encounter an issue which i have no idea what went wrong.

the brief description of the problem is i have a player that can shoot dash through walls, the walls are made up of bricks which are pooled, and each brick have its own killable script attached. Ok, the player can run through the walls and despawned the segment of the bricks that are hit by the player. But there are alot of error messages :


NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Killable.TriggerEnter2D (UnityEngine.Collider2D other) (at Assets/DarkTonic/CoreGameKit/Scripts/Utility/Killable.cs:436)
Killable.OnTriggerEnter2D (UnityEngine.Collider2D other) (at Assets/DarkTonic/CoreGameKit/Scripts/Utility/Killable.cs:432)

( i have not used any layer / tag filters. )
i have no idea if the current version of core gamekit support 4.3 2d physic or not. or the problem is somewhere else.

the project is small so i can send you the folder if needed.

 

just realised previous poster has similar issue, it's sad that you have no control, but does this error pop up have any performance slow down or causing other bugs to appear ? I don't wanna have to force myself to use 3d physics to replace my 2d physics lol

 

Ok, I'll have a look and see if it makes sense. Thanks!

 

Yes, there's a sticky in our support forum about this one. In the editor, logging an error frequently does cause performance to slow down. I fear that you would have to use 3d physics for now until they release a fix.

 

I just updated from an older version (2.7 I think?). I definitely need the layer feature, however, I can't seem to figure out how to adjust the spawn layer mode. Can someone explain how to adjust the spawn layer?

 

It looks like I forgot to add an explanation for those in the readme. Will do for the next version. For both, there are 3 choices:

1) Use Spawn Prefab Setting (default).
2) Use Spawner Setting.
3) Custom.

If you choose #2, after the prefab is spawned, it will take the layer or tag of the spawner.
If you choose #3, you choose the layer or tag from a dropdown, and it will be used.

 

Thanks for the quick response Jerotas! I'm still confused though, I don't see this dropdown on the Wave Syncro prefab spawner nor the Triggered spawner.

 

Right here on a Syncro. Same position on a Triggered.

 

Oh very odd, those are not showing up for me. The inspector header is also old (says Killer Waves 2.7) and yet I do see some new features. I had deleted the entire Killer Waves folder before I updated. I'll have to work on this some more tomorrow to see what happened.

 

Yeah, you definitely don't have the newest then if it says Killer Waves. Please delete the entire Killer Waves folder and the Core GameKit folder, and the DarkTonic folder, then re-download. That should do it.

 

Got it working now, thanks. Spawn layers and all!

 

Excellent, no problem.

 

Core GameKit V3.2.1.6 will be live in 10 minutes. Changelog:

• Attention: make sure you delete the entire Core GameKit folder before updating so this next part will import properly. Moved these files into the "don't include in build" folder: killerwavespawnwidget.fbx, killerwavewidgettexture materials.
• Fixed WaveOffset to use rotation instead of World Space.
• Greatly improved CPU load of all custom inspectors. They were needlessly redrawing constantly.
• Added EndWave method to TriggeredSpawners. This take an EventType parameter and will end the currently spawning wave of the same Event Type, if any.
• New Triggered Spawner Listener method "WaveEndedEarly" for the above bullet.
• Added ability to propagate the EndWave call to Triggered Spawners into their child spawners (respects the same Trigger Source field that "propagate events" uses).
• New Triggered Spawner Listener method "PropagatedWaveEndedEarly" for the above bullet.

 

Just realised how useful this will be in the combat for my project. That is some way off in dev terms but as a manager, somewhat decoupled from the enemy AI but taking care of the structure of an encounter, seems a perfect bunch of tools. I grabbed this when it was killer waves as I planned to make a shooter of the gradius 5 style at one point but that passed and the current project is significantly different, but it makes no difference to how useful this will be. At this price, an unbeatable steal, and still being updated! Grab it!

 

Thank you lazygunn. I still have a short list of features to add.

 

I'm not great at programming and i'm also very aware to how the fixes for that (hello asset store) can do things in a great way when they each take care of a particular thing and don't get too mixed up in each other, this can handle a very particular aspect so definitely keep it focussed for sure, but would be interesting seeing how you wish to develop it.

I suppose one example might be (not particularly for my use but in the remit) a take on 'projectile logic' much like the bullet pattern editors you can get paid and free, as it would be interesting and cool to have some of the complexity you can get in those scripts (The classic scripting is BulletML for writing the behaviours for projectiles for bullet-hell style shooters but any shooter with intelligent and elaborate projectile design, like gradius v for eg could benefit straight up - would look spectacular given a third dimension in just about any game with projectiles in it) but directly linked up to aspects of this product - damage dealt based on which phase of the projectiles life, events cueing for a stage of the projectile (Say if it splits, collides with another of its type etc) and so on. If that had a simple node based approach with some realtime feedback in-editor so you got an idea of what your changes were doing (I say node based because i am, and maybe others are, pretty dim at working out what is going on when they cant set it out visually), i can see that being popular in and of itself, nevermind intrinsic integration with a system that already manages the spawning of whatever's firing them, or abstract the idea entirely and the whole spawning and lifetime of a spawn of anything be controlled this way. Problem I have when trying to think up imaginative patterns and behaviours for things that aren't set in some complex AI scripting is a lack of easy implementation then instant feedback

I might have in my project an enemy spawn, the enemy being a 3rd person 3D 'monster' type with complex mecanim graphs and AI behaviours and those behaviours having specific systems for controlling them - the spawning handled by this, then the AI doing its thing then when dead the cleanup done with this, every time the AI fires it can use this to manage the projectile(s) and so on. Just an idea as my imagination did its thing

Certainly I don't know of any tools that give really quick feedback on projectile behaviour and straightforward ways to affect it, and it would be really neat to see schmup-style projectiles in non-schmup 3D games, with complex movement, appearance and effect behaviours, and that sort of representation would work nicely for complex spawning too, and as this already operates strongly for pooling and managing this aspect of a game it seems a good fit

I don't know if that's all asking a lot, but it caught my imagination! Better get back to what i'm meant to be doing

 

Yeah, I don't want to tackle any huge features right now - I'm finishing up our 2nd game. But if there are little things that can lead in that direction, I may be able to squeeze them in and it will help point us in the right direction. I don't know how those node-type UI's are actually created and that's definitely a huge feature.

As far as projectiles colliding with other things and becoming another different projectile, you can already do that with Killables and Triggered Spawners.

 

Hi Jerotas,

First thanks for implemented the feature I suggested a while ago! Many thanks!

I have a question about sending custom event to Triggered Spawner. In the manual, you mentioned below

Custom Events (these are meant to be only called by code you write, if you want to start waves at times other that the events listed)
i. CodeTriggeredEvent1
ii. CodeTriggeredEvent2

Could you please kindly show me how to actually trigger the event "CodeTriggeredEvent1" from my custom code?
Thank you!

 

hi Jerotas,

What a cool plugin for the price, blown away!

please can you do me a favor, I'm in the middle of a game now and used pool manager 'but' I'm swapping that out for this. And to save me learning the whole program for now and a sh_t load of time please can you give me a bullet point 'how to'.

all i need to do is create a pool of 8 different prefabs (so the pool will obviously contain instances of each of those prefabs at runtime, and i will set however many instances of each):

now the important part for me, i want it to pick a random instance from that pool (well a random from one of the 8 different types/prefabs (but still an instance of course) so i get a good mix, not just a random from the instances as there could be 100-200 instances and i get the same one over and over, hope that makes sense) say every 0.5 seconds and spawn at a random position (say x, y between 2-12 for example),

or if that isn't possible just a position i set and then i make the position random, but i need it to select a random instance (selection from one of the 8 types/prefabs) from the pool to spawn every 0.5 secs.

and when they collide or go off screen despawn to be reused, thats it.

how to?:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

soooo... grateful if you can help. I'm using playmaker by the way.

anyone thinking of buying this asset don't hesitate, its ridiculously cool and for this price, best asset i ever bought!!!

(also master audio user.)

Big Thanks!

 

You'll need to put a public variable of type TriggeredSpawner in the script that you'll call it from, like this:

Code (csharp):

1. public TriggeredSpawner trig;

Then, elsewhere in that same script, you trigger the wave like this (after whatever logic you have is satisfied).

Code (csharp):

1. trig.ActivateCodeTriggeredEvent1();

That's it!

 

No Playmaker actions will be needed for this.

1) Set up a Prefab Pool with the 8 prefabs.
2) Either put in "auto-add missing items" for testing, or add all 8 prefabs to Pool Boss, with the max numbers of each that you'll need.
3) Each prefab should use the Killable script with "invisible event" checked under Despawn Death Triggers.
4) Set up a single spawner (Triggered Spawner with Visible event will be easiest) that uses the prefab pool you made. Tell it to spawn 200 enemies over 100 seconds and fill out the random position section.

That should do it for starters. Please do watch all 4 of the videos on youtube. They are quite short but very informative. Also, please leave us a review on the Asset Store when you're satisfied

 

Ha! That's easy!! Thanks again!

 

Indeed! No problem. I'm not sure what sort of scenario you guys come up with where you actually need to use code-triggered event. You can't use any of the built-in events? What is your scenario?

 

just random brainstorming don't mind me, i did think the system had already the ability to do things i said i think i was talking with a mind to well, incredibly complex behaviours that are very hard to design without constant feedback. node stuff does sound a bit cliche eventually, like' check our new stuff, now with Nodes(TM)', but i guess the visual interface is very abstracted from the code and lends itself to instant feedback, v.fast iteration, a node in code being a variable or datatype, or a function that takes the datatype or elements of it as input, alters it then throws out a result, the function be inherent to the node system or referenced to in a script, or a conditional, in the editor if that can be instantly visualised as the lifetime of a spawned entity, the things that influence it over the lifetime and its despawning then you have really quick development of things like bullet patterns in particular (Artist friendly much more productive) but really taking the basis of a schmup, any aspect of that could be implemented in fractions of the time with a lot of nuance as producing the behaviour becomes quick and time on refining it becomes more available. Plus it looks fancy and people like that sort of thing

ive just been ranting at someone about emergent behaviour in games and the idea of things being spawned in large amounts with supplementary behaviours, that might in themselves spawn entities with complex behaviours, and that being visualised would be neat. I just threw all this in here because I thought it was an interesting proposition for what this can do. Node graphs are just a more visual way of designing what it can already do, but if you can match that with a visual representation of what is happening through the graph, its nice - good example of a node based system working really nicely on something specific is Shader Forge - you now have people who wouldn't go anywhere near a shader finding making shaders a load of fun, and the complex, 'different', sometimes completely unexpected and often really clever results from experimentation decorate the asset's thread

Maybe a poke in the right direction on a small scale is internally and i guess mostly on a free time basis getting a graph in the editor GUI presented and attaching references to functions in a script to each node and the graph produce an output that can be read as a script and control a gameobject. That might be literally composing a new script with strings, i'm not entirely sure how thats done in a developed node editor myself. From what i've seen it does tend to involve a bunch of refactoring over time as you learn better ways to do things, but this is something that i think would benefit (I'm indulging my own private fantasy with 3D guys firing weapons with really crazy projectiles), hence the ramble

 

Thanks for the info. We're not likely to add "node anything" unless I see a very good reason, as it can already do most of these things. Currently it seems like most of these couldn't really be done in a node system without rewriting pretty much everything, so it's not a winning proposition.

 

worked like a charm! Thanks

can i make a request? i read you guys are second to none at implementing functionality.

On the core game kit playmaker actions please can you add on the "core game kit pool boss spawn action" the option to store the spawned object in a gameobject variable. that way you can use getComponent and have access to all the components at runtime. i use this heavily in my game and im gonna pretty lost without it.

the standard playmaker "create Object" action has this, and your spawn action will be replacing it (as pool manager did before).

many thanks.

 

fair enough! i find throwing random ideas at things something to do when im having downtime, not a lot of them stick haha, one day!

 

Sure, that makes sense to add. I'll get it in the next version. Can you take a look at the rest of the included Playmaker actions and let us know if there are any other tweaks like this you'd like to see?