Zone Controller Pro

It probably goes with out saying, but:
If you have downloaded the free version to experiment with, a rating/review goes a long way to help the overall success of a new package. Please take a few moments and let the community know what you think.

Thanks!

 

Ah, the Pro version is up.

 

Are you the town crier?

 

Pretty much. But they're manly tears!

 

The British are Coming!

 

I picked up a pro version and will do a review for you next week. I'm in crunch at the moment but should be able to check it out as I wish to use it for a couple of things in this project. The review more likely to be the end of next week rather than the start.

 

Much appreciated and thanks for your support!
Those reviews go a long way

 

yeah just picked it up
yeah give it to me

 

LOL, I just saw you purchase it on Google analytics realtime
Creepy huh?

 

Thanks by the way!

 

Zone Controller & Circular Gravity Force!

 

Note to UFPS users.
The way that UFPS works is when the Crouch command is started, UFPS will destroy the capsule collider on the player and cause Zones to fade out. As a work around, you should use the Collider method on the Zone controller and setup an invisible cube on parented to your character.

 

Here is a demo of Zone Controller and Amplify Bloom:

 

Great tool! Thank you for making this.
I'm having a hard time getting "Active" to work on a spotlight. I would like to disable it outside of the zone so it's no longer calculated, so I'm setting the light component to off and setting "active" on in the zone. I'm assuming it should enable the light component when I enter it but it's not. The light intensity works great... Or is it the active object parent? (that would be a cool option too, I tried it with no luck). Is there a way to enable/disable the shadows, not just visually?
Also, I use SECTR for streaming, I would love to use this with the objects being controlled still being in their streaming chunks. Right now they both have to live outside of streaming together.
Thanks!

 

Hi there,
So, it looks like you found a bug
I will get it patched up into the next release, I'm so sorry about that.
I have a new version (1.0.1) coming out soon, and I will make sure that this is included.
In the mean time, you can adjust the intensity of the light and set the transition time to like 0.1.

Again,
So sorry!

 

We are using Sectr as well. So I gather Zone controller does not work correctly with Sectr? Are the streaming chunks not using the Zone controller anymore? We have not yet used Zone Controller with Sectr.

 

Hi @JohnRossitter Just trying out ZCP on an empty project and getting some compile errors in the bundles Standard Assets\First Person Controller.
Basically I get:
* CrossPlatformInput doesn't exist
* Utility doesn't exist
If I do fix the above by installing the relevant Unity Assets (so just looks like something isn't included in the package), I still get an error with:
* MouseLook isn't recognised.
Hopefully you can check these out and update for the next version (assuming it's not me )

 

Hi Simon,
Which version of Unity are you using?
The demo scene was submitted using 5.3.0, and the standard assets may be different than an older version.
Also, which portions of the standard assets are you importing?
You will need Characters and Input.
Let me know, Thanks!

 

Thats a good question, I have not done any testing with SECTR.
I will try and look at it tomorrow and see what I can come up with.

 

Unless you have custom code (I don't), most things cant communicate from in and out of its chunk.. or at least in my experience, Ive even asked the author and he said it required code. Once I export my chunk, it breaks the connections.
Thanks for looking into it!

 

FYI, I found the cause of this issue and it had been patched. The patch will be included in the next release.

 

FYI, I have a ticked open with the new owners of UFPS to discuss this with them.

 

Had an article about Zone Controller published today:
http://80.lv/articles/zone-controller-enhancing-your-unity-5-game/

 

Check out this preview of 1.0.1 and how Zone Controller can now address Complex types and access/modify their properties.

 

I was using 5.3.2 and 5.4 (shhh) with ZCP V1.0.0 (as that's what's on the store at the mo)
My first test was a purely clean project without importing anything else (as the docs don't mention this, the CharacterController is included with the package)
My second test was after importing the CrossPlatformInput and Utility standard assets (since they were the missing references)
Which then left me with an error about MouseLook.

Easy to test by starting a new project, completely replicable.

*Edit
Ok re-read that and imported the Characters asset as well and that that did clear the issue.
However, that's a lot of code and assets to import just to enable the asset to work. Any chance you can clean up the dependencies in the project so you don't need to install multiple asset packages to get it to run?

*Edit2
Ok, retested again by only importing the Characters asset and that works as a single import (only because it also contains CPI and Utility)
But I'd still stress, that's far too much to add to a project just to get the asset running. Considering adding the full Characters pack to a project adds 30Mb in raw assets.
I'd recommend having a ZCP with just it's components and having a separate package with the demo elements in it (which has a dependency on the Characters pack) for testing.
Else devs have to repackage your asset manually just to get out what they need (and have to update that each time you do)
Just my 5p worth

 

Simon, wow, you did so much work here
Yes, I will clean those dependencies up in 1.0.1 which is coming soon.
It's been a big update with lots of new features, but I will clean all of that up there.
Thanks for your patience
J

 

No worries. Just got asked to look at this asset and it does look amazing. So happy to help test and give you a few packaging "pointers". Feel free to pm me if you want to chat (or test before publishing 1.01 )

 

Yeah, the latest version of the asset store tools seems to randomly pick and drop files...not too happy about that

 

Had a user ask me about Colorful Fog asset:
Here it is in action:

You can get colorful fog for $10.00 today at: http://u3d.as/iVY

 

Just a reminder, If you have been holding off on purchasing Zone Controller Pro, the discounted price will expire on March 1st 2016 and go to the normal price.

 

@JohnRossitter - BTW, remember to add Zone Controller to your sig.

(EDIT: That didn't take long! lol)

Any news on compatibility / conflicts with SECTR?

Any special considerations to get it to work with additive scenes?

 

Good call there!
No, no news on SECTR, I sent an email off to the developers earlier this week, but have not heard back yet.

As for additive scenes, I think this will be a tougher nut to crack as Zone Controller relies heavily on runtime reflection and does not really know the context of what it's changing, so trying to make changes to a Game Component which is not loaded could cause exceptions.

I have a notion in my mind to allow you to specify prerequisites on each Zone, so perhaps I could add a predicate for a Scene to be loaded in the stack. I will add it to my research of 1.0.2

 

Here is a new demo with uSky Beta 2

 

1.0.1 code is complete.
Performing some code cleanup and then to the Beta Folder this weekend.

If you have a license of Pro, send me your order number in a PM and google enabled email address and I will put you in my Google drive share for betas.

Hope to be releasing the update on the store by the middle of next week!

 

Finally bought it, fantastic tool!

 

That's what I call a Win-Win

 

Can you have more than one "master controller" in the hierarchy at a time? I suspect that's the main issue, but I could be misunderstanding things.

If each additive scene (or SECTR sector, which is an additive scene) supplies its own zone master controller, along with its zones, then it seems to me that will resolve the issues for additive scenes and SECTR.

Also ... is there any problem with activating / deactivating zones?

 

In theory, you can have multiple master controllers, as they are not true singletons.
It could produce some interesting side effects, but I can't think of any direct reason that it would not work, as a Zone is explicitly bound to a single Master.

Sadly, I just do not have enough experience with SECTR and additive scenes to give an educated answer to this right now. I will say, that if Zone Controller can see your target GameObject/Component/Property, it can manage it at runtime, additive or not.

I have plans to address this in depth in my next release (1.0.2).
If you want to write the devs over at SECTR and let them know that you would like to make sure it works with Zone Controller, maybe they will get back to me faster. I still have not heard anything.

 

So, I just did a simple test.
I took the sample Viking village scene and added a new additive scene to it which contains just a cube.
I went to my Zone on Viking village and drug the cube from the new scene into it and set its transform properties to scale when you enter the zone.
Ran in play mode and it worked fine

I then removed the additive scene from my viking village

Ran the scene, and the cube was still there and still re-sized.

 

Can you additively load a zone and test that? I think that's the issue.

 

Thats a good question.

I think there is a chicken and egg case here, in that the objects you wish to control with Zone Controller, must be registered in the Zone before hand, so if you are trying to register something, it must be loaded in the editor at some point. (Unless you try to go the route of a prefab, but those would not be the same uniqueID).

Im looking to release 1.0.1 next week and I will immediately start on 1.0.2 thereafter.

I wish I had better answers for you right not, but I just don't have that much experience with additive scenes.

 

I think in the mean time, it may be best to setup a master zone controller in each scene, and let the relationships of the Zones to master mitigate the transitions.

 

Just some stuff I have been putting out there on the socials...

 

So, Im adding one final feature into 1.0.1 before I push it up to the store for approval.
The Master Zone will now have the option to register game object within it. When a Zone event is triggered like entry/exit, it will broadcast notifications to any registered GameObjects to let them know.

 

I'm getting some reports of people having trouble with Opsive's Third Person Controller :http://u3d.as/aUv
It seems that when you try to parent a ghost cube collider under the character, that the game is disabling the colliders at startup. As a work around, you can put the ghost collider outside of the character and then reparent it immediately after the level starts. I'm opening a ticket with them about it, but just FYI.

 

If memory serves correctly, there is a way when you set up Sectr Stream where you can define some thing that get used by all the scenes, almost like persistent game manager type things. I know when I tested Gaia with Sectr Stream back in August, I remember reading something along those lines. Or maybe doing something like adding a third layer where:

1. Master - the current Master would become something that is persistent between all scenes and carried from scene to scene.
2. Scene - a Scene Zone Controller which is optional and if it is present, it could override default settings of the master but is not persistent between scenes.
3. Zone - current zone controllers for individual zones which could override both Scene settings as well as any Master settings not already overridden by the Scene settings.

 

I'm still not 100% clear on the particular use case for Zone Controller with SECTR.
What exactly are we trying to accomplish ?

 

John, Sectr breaks up the terrain into new "scenes" so it might affect the Zone Controller we have already placed on the terrain. I think that the best thing to do is ask the people at Sectr. lol

We have tested Sectr on a test terrain but are not currently using it on our main terrain. Someone who is using it should talk to the guys who made Sectr.

 

Yeah I think I understand that much.
So the question is how many Master Zone Controllers to use?

 

The question is do we need a Master Controller in each separate "scene"? One problem is that with Sectr, you must remove the sectors in order to modify the terrain so we would probably have to place the controllers before separate the scenes. Another choice might be to slice the terrains before using Sectr. Might be easier that way. Then place a Master Controller in each slice.