In this tutorial we’ll set up our player and spawn it in the scene.

The player group will have 2 members, but we’ll only set up one for now – the fighter. The goal of this tutorial is to be able to run around with our player.

We’ll set up:

• animations
• the player (combatant)
• world scene (spawn, camera borders)
• start game schematic

Let’s get to it!

Animations #

We’ll start with the animations and focus on movement, i.e. idle, walk and run animations. We’ll set up more animations later.

The models used in the tutorial assets worked best using the legacy animation system, so that’s what we’re going with. Also, the legacy animation system is great at giving you control over playing animations when you want, instead of relying on state transitions like Mecanim does.

Legacy animations are played on layers, higher layers overrule lower layers, we’ll use that to ensure the correct animation has priority:

• Layer -1: idle
• Layer 0: walk, run
• Layer 1: damage, evade, etc.
• etc.

Navigate to Combatants > Animations, select the Default animation setup and change the following settings.

Base Settings #

Legacy Settings #

Since we’re using the legacy animation system, that’s where we’ll do our animation setup.

That’s it for the animations.

Combatants General Settings #

Next, we’ll handle some general settings for all our combatants.

Navigate to Combatants > Combatants and select the General Settings.

Animations & Movement #

We’ll set up the default animations for all combatants, move speed and sound assignments.

Animations #

Auto Animation #

Auto animations are best only used with Legacy animation systems. They’ll automatically play idle/movement animations based on the current move speed of a combatant.

Move Speed #

The move speed handles how fast a combatant will move for walk, run and sprint movement (e.g. when used by the player controls or the move AI).

Sound Settings #

We’ll assign audio assets to organizer types for all our combatants. The individual combatants can replace them with their own setup if you want.

You can also assign multiple audio assets to a organizer type – one will be played randomly.

Fighter Combatant #

We’ll just change the name and set up a prefab, we don’t need any status setup (other than the default setup), since we don’t fight in battles yet and only want to run around.

Navigate to Combatants > Combatants and select the Default combatant.

Content Information #

Base Settings > Prefab Settings #

Save Changes #

That’s it for the setup in the editor for now.

Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking on Save Settings at the bottom of the editor.

World Scene Setup #

Open the World scene (found in Assets/Scenes/).

We’ll add a Game Starter, a Spawn Point and Camera Borders.

Add Game Starter #

First, we’ll add a game starter to the scene and set it up for quick game testing.

Game starters are used to initialize your ORK project. Without it, you can’t access any functionality without causing errors.

You can either use the scene hierarchy context menu or the ORK toolbar.

I’ll use the context menu: ORK Framework > Game Starter

The added game starter should already have your Project asset set up. Change the following setting in the Game Starter component’s inspector.

It doesn’t really matter where you place the game starter, but it’s best to have them somewhere outside your actual level architecture to not get in the way.

Add Spawn Point #

Next, we’ll add a spawn point – we’ll spawn on the right side of town, near the gate.

Like the game starter, you can add a spawn point via the context menu or the ORK toolbar. The toolbar is a searchable dropdown, which makes it easy to find what you’re looking for.

Let’s use the ORK toolbar (see this documentation in case you haven’t added it yet) – click on the ORK button in your toolbar and search for: Spawn Point

The spawn point will be placed directly on the ground (or whatever else is hit by the raycast into the scene) at the screen’s center – and it automatically has the next free Spawn ID assigned. Spawn IDs are used to identify a spawn point, so when we (soon) spawn our player using a schematic, that’s the spawn ID we’ll use.

Since there wasn’t a spawn point in the scene before, we’ll have the spawn ID 0 assigned.

With the spawn point selected, we’ll change a few things in the inspector.

Transform #

Change the rotation of the spawn point in the inspector.

Spawn Point #

Add Camera Borders #

If you look at the scene hierarchy, you’ll see a game object called Camera Borders, it’s child objects are for our camera borders:

• Town
• Gate
• Field 1
• Field 2

They already have a collider components (used as triggers) set up to cover their parts of the scene – when the player moves between them, the camera will switch over.

All we need to do is add a Camera Border component to each of them using the component menu. The component offers a few settings, but we don’t need any of them for our setup, except for the Gate camera border, so select the Gate child object and change the following setting.

That’s it for the scene, save your changes.

Start Schematic #

A schematic is a reusable, node-based blueprint for what you want to do. It consists of connected nodes that work similar to a flow chart – each node performs a task and decides the next node that’ll be executed.

Schematics are an integral part of ORK’s workflow and are used to animate your battles, talk to NPCs, progress quests and much more. We’ll cover different setups as part of this tutorial series.

For now, we’ll set up what happens when we start a new game, i.e. add a player and spawn it.

Open the schematic editor either using the Unity menu (Window > Gaming is Love > Schematic Editor) or the keyboard shortcut (CTRL/CMD + ALT + M). The schematic editor will open with a new, empty schematic ready for setup.

We’ll join the Fighter to the player group and spawn at the spawn point (spawn ID 0).

Join Group #

Add Node > Group > Group > Join Group

First, we’ll add Fighter to the player group. This will automatically join a combatant to the group’s battle group as well, unless no free slot is available.

Spawn Player #

Add Node > Game > Player > Spawn Player

Now, we’ll spawn the player in the scene.

And that’s it for the schematic. Click on Save Schematic to save it, e.g. as StartGame.

I usually save all my schematics in Assets/Schematics/ and sub folders of it.

Close the schematic editor.

Start Menu #

The start menu settings also define the schematic used when starting a new game.

Navigate to Menus > Start Menu and change the following settings.

New Game Settings #

Save Changes #

And that’s it – we’re ready to take our player for a test walk!

Don’t forget to save your changes by clicking on Save Settings at the bottom of the editor.

Testing #

Alright – let’s take a walk. With the World scene still open, hit play.

Great, we spawn, can move around and the camera border is doing it’s job!

 

Next, we’ll set up the game’s music and connect our scenes.