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

While the player group will have 2 members, 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)
• town scene (spawn, camera borders)
• start game schematic

Let’s get to it!

Animation Types #

First, we’ll set up a new animation type.

Animation types are used to play animations without having to worry what that animation actually is. E.g. an Attack animation type can play different animations based on what combatant plays it, or what weapon the combatant has equipped. You can learn more about animations in this documentation.

A new project already comes with multiple default animation types, so we only need to add one more for our use (though we don’t use most of the default ones).

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

13: Use #

This’ll be used to play an animation when using an item or ability.

Animations #

We’ll already set up the animations for all combatants – the player combatants both use the same setup, while the enemies of this tutorial series are simply sprites without any animations (and if a combatant doesn’t use an animation, it just doesn’t play it). 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.

Base Settings #

We’ll set up using Object Variables on our combatants. They’re variables that are bound to a combatant/game object.

We’ll later use them to show or hide an equipped weapon while attacking.

Object Variable 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).

Sound Settings #

We’ll make use of the sound types we’ve set up and assign default audio clips to them for all our combatants. The individual combatants can replace them with their own setup if you want.

You can also assign multiple audio clips to a sound type – one of the added clips will be played randomly.

The audio clips can be found in Assets/Tutorial Assets/NinjaAdventure/Sounds/Game/.

Fighter Combatant #

For now, we’ll just change the name and set up a prefab, we don’t need any status setup (other than the automatic 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.

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, 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 left side of town, directly by the exit.

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.

Transform #

Change the position of the spawn point in the inspector.

Spawn Point #

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 #

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. You can learn more about schematics in this Makinom documentation.

You’ll make frequent use of schematics when creating your games, e.g. to talk to an NPC, animate an action in battle or, as in this case, set up what happens at the start of a new game. We’ll cover different setups as part of this tutorial series.

Open the Makinom editor again and navigate to Schematics – it’s time to set up a simple schematic we’ll use when starting our game.

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 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 the start menu yet (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 … but the player’s sprite currently rotates into the movement direction … let’s fix that!

Combatant Prefab Setup #

All our (player) combatant prefabs are variants of a base prefab, so we only need to make changes to the base prefab.

Open the CombatantBase prefab for editing, you can find it in Assets/Tutorial Assets/Prefabs/Combatants/. The structure is like this:

The Mount and it’s child objects will rotate with the root (CombatantBase) into the direction the combatant moves.

However, we don’t want this for the Sprite, which displays the combatant’s sprite. To prevent this, we’ll add a Face Camera component to it.

Add Face Camera Component #

Add a Face Camera component to the CombatantBase > Sprite child object using the component menu.

And that’s it for the prefab – save the changes.

Testing #

Hit play in the Town scene again.

That looks better.

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