In this tutorial we’ll set up our player and some initial 2D related settings.

The player will not participate in battle – in fact, the player combatant will even be hidden from the player (playing the game) and only controlled when not in battle, i.e. running around in town. You might recognize this setup from games like Pokemon, where your trainer runs around in the world, but battles are handled by others.

Our player will be a princess, which commands her army of randomized combatants (with random names and appearance).

We’ll set up:

• a few 2D related settings
• game controls
• animations (already for all combatants)
• the princess
• town scene (spawn, camera borders)
• start game schematic

Let’s get to it, the princess is waiting.

2D Setup #

First, we’ll handle some settings for our 2D game – it’s pretty simple, we need to prioritize 2D raycasting (or limit it completely to 2D) and set the default horizontal plane to use a 2D top down setup.

Navigate to Game > Game Settings and change the following settings.

Base Settings #

As their names suggest, these are the Default settings – everything that uses them has also options to overrule them with a custom setup, but you’ll usually not need that unless you have some special cases where you switch perspective or change between 2D and 3D.

ORK Game Settings > Player/Group Settings #

We also need to select the player’s faction and increase the battle group size – we want to have a maximum of 6 player combatants in battle.

Game Controls #

We’ll use ORK’s built-in Top Down 2D controls and the Top Down Border camera. A fresh project setup already comes with some default input keys (e.g. WASD movement keys) set up for us, so we just need to use them in our controls. You can learn more about game controls in ORK in this documentation.

Navigate to Base/Control > Game Controls.

ORK Control Settings > Player Controls #

We’ll use the Top Down 2D controls, which move the player using a Rigidbody 2D component.

ORK Control Settings > Camera Controls #

We’ll use the Top Down Border camera – this camera control can be used in both 2D and 3D games (handling is based on the horizontal plane we just set up).

This camera control can also use Camera Border components in the scene to limit the viewing area for the camera, more on that below in the scene setup.

Since this is a 2D game using Orthographic cameras, the distance/height settings can be ignored. However, we’ll set up panning for our battles to pan the camera using WASD keys.

Panning Settings #

Animation Types #

We’ll continue with setting up animations – first, we’ll set up a new animation type. You can learn more about animations in this documentation.

Navigate to Base/Control > Animation Types and add new type.

13: Use #

Animations #

We’ll already set up the animations for all combatants – they all use the same setup, which makes it a lot easier. We’re using sprites (2D) as our combatants, i.e. our animations have to be set up using Mecanim (the legacy animation system doesn’t support sprite animations).

Let’s take a look at the animator controller, you can find it in Assets/Tutorial Assets/Animations/, the Combatant Controller is the basis for all combatants (they use animator override controllers to replace animations).

Idle, Move and Attack are blend trees, looking like this:

Since we’re dealing with 2D, we need different animations for different directions, this is handled by the blend trees, which use the combatant’s rotation interpreted into a 4-directional value (0-3), which is forwarded through our animation setup (see below).

Additionally, the Use, Attack and Dead animations are played by setting Bool parameters, i.e. they’ll play until we stop the animation (which switches the parameters off) – this lets us control the duration of these animations in our schematics, which will play and stop them as needed.

The animator controller uses the following parameters:

• Speed
  The movement speed, forwarded from our animation setup.
  Controls if idle or movement animations are used.
  This is a Float parameter.
• Direction
  The direction the combatant is facing, forwarded from our animation setup.
  Controls which direction animation is used.
  This is a Float parameter.
• Attack, Use and Dead
  Play the according animations while toggled on.
  These are Bool parameters.

This is just one possible setup for handling 2D animations, Mecanim and ORK are flexible and can support many different combinations and setups – ultimately, this’ll depend on what your game needs and how your combatants are moved.

Alright, let’s handle the setup in ORK. Navigate to Base/Control > Animations and change the Default animation setup.

Mecanim Settings #

We’ll forward the horizontal speed and the rotation (i.e. the direction) to the animator controller.

We’ll now add 4 animations for attack, use, death and revive.

Mecanim Animaton 0 #

Mecanim Animation 1 #

Mecanim Animation 2 #

Mecanim Animation 3 #

That’s it for the animations.

Combatants General Settings #

Next, we’ll handle some general settings for all our combatants. You can learn more about combatants in this documentation.

Navigate to Combatants > Combatants > General Settings.

Animations & Movement #

We’ll set up Mecanim as the default animation system and use the animations we just set up.

Additionally, we’ll set up the Default Movement Component for 2D movement.

Default Animation System #

Default Animations #

Default Movement Component #

We’ll use the Default movement component – it’s a very simple component, in 3D it’ll move using a Character Controller, in 2D a Rigidbody 2D component (or rather, it uses the one it finds).

Princess Combatant #

For our princess we only need to set up a prefab, we don’t need any status setup (other than the automatic default setup), since she doesn’t fight in battles.

Navigate to Combatants > Combatants and add a new combatant.

Base Settings > Prefab Settings #

Save Changes #

That’s it for the setup in the editor.

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

Scene Setup #

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

We’ll add an ORK 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. We’ll go with the ORK Game Starter variant.

Game starters are used to initialize your project, without it, you can’t access any functionality without causing errors. You can learn more about game starters in this documentation.

You can either use the scene hierarchy context menu or the scene wizard (e.g. via CTRL + ALT + W, or using the Unity menu: Window > Gaming Is Love > Makinom Scene Wizard).

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

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

It doesn’t really matter where you place the game starter.

Add Spawn Point #

Next, we’ll add a spawn point – we’ll spawn on the right side of the river, somewhere in the center.

Like the game starter, you can add a spawn point via the context menu or the scene wizard. The scene wizard has searchable popups for adding game objects or components, which can get very convenient when having to set up multiple things.

I’ll use the context menu: Makinom > 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.

Add Camera Borders #

If you look at the scene hierarchy, you’ll see 2 game objects for our camera borders:

• Camera Border Left
• Camera Border Right

Those two already have a Box Collider 2D 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.

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

Start Schematic #

Back to the editor, navigate to Schematics – it’s time to set up a schematic we’ll use when starting our game.

We’ll join the Princess to the player group, remove her from the battle group, hide the combatant and spawn at the spawn point (spawn ID 0). This procedure is needed to have our non-battle, hidden player.

Join Group #

Add Node > Group > Group > Join Group

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

Leave Battle Group #

Add Node > Group > Battle Group > Leave Battle Group

We remove the Princess from the battle group, since she shouldn’t stain her hands with blood.

Hide Member #

Add Node > Group > Group > Hide Member

And now we’ll hide the Princess – she’s still part of the group (and the player), but will be hidden, i.e. not listed when showing group members.

Spawn ORK Player #

Add Node > Game > Player > Spawn ORK 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.

Start Menu #

We don’t use a start menu in our game (we just hit play in the Town scene), but we’ll need to set up our start schematic.

Navigate to UI > 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 Town scene still open, hit play.

Great, we spawn, can walk around and the camera border is doing it’s job. The player’s sprite currently rotates into the movement direction – we’ll fix that in the next part!

 

Next, we’ll set up the interaction controller, music and some other things.