All posts by Dave

Most of my attention the past few weeks have gone to developing Demox however, I’ve managed to put some time on fixing a few things for the Solution Organizer Utility aswell. While not ready to be deployed, these changes will be in place for v0.1.2.0 which will be released sometime within the next few weeks!

Furthermore, a few bugs and glitches have been sorted out:

• Fixed issue with the “Manage Widgets” button not opening the Widget Preferences screen
• Fixed issue that made dashboard widgets glitch if applied inproperly in the Widgets Preference screen
• Missing or removed solutions will no longer be printed in the Recent Files list
• Fixed issue with the Solution Outliner not beeing reset when loading a new project/solution
• Fixed issue with the Dashboard Statistics field displaying wrong item sums
• Fixed issue with the Item Editor not loading “Target Build” for the first item opened after loading a solution

I’ll return to you with a release date soon! 🙂

Note!

This article is part of the, now deprecated, Demox development log. Demox was cancelled and is no longer in active development so this article can be somewhat out of context- however, I felt some information here could still be of use to someone, therefore it’ll remain for anyone to read.

My previous projects have contained water however, I’ve never put any effort into making it behave like water would. In LBKR for instance the water was purely a decoration, it would not react to objects colliding with it’s surface nor would said objects be manipulated by the water in any way- this made it feel very artificial and, in lack of a better word, un-watery… ( Please excuse my word-slaughtering, keep in mind that english is not my native language ;P )

Water Interaction

float vDepth;    //Depth of the current water volume
float vSurfacePoint; //World position along y-axis of the current water volume's surface
float speedPenalty;  //The velocity reduction of this instance
Transform vSurface;  //Current water volume

//Water volumes are identified through the OnTriggerEnter method
public void OnTriggerEnter( Collider other ) {
    if( target.IsDead || _update || !other.CompareTag( Tags.SurfaceWater )) {
        return;
    }

    vSurface = other.transform;   //Assign colliding volume as current water volume
    target.InWater = true;        //Flag target avatar as inside a water volume

    //Determine if the current water surface is deep enough to swim/drown in
    vDepth = MapMaster.Current.FindWaterVolume( vSurface).VolumeDepth;
    if( vDepth >= SharedGlobalProps.SwimDepth ) {
        ControlledFx splash = GameObjectPool.Current.PullCommonFx(     CommonFxNames.W_Impact_Avatar );    //Pull a water-splash effect from the ObjectPool

        if( splash != null ) {    //Play the water splash effect if found
            splash.FireFxCheap( transform.position );
        }
    }

    StartManagedUpdate();         //Starts a custom Update-method
    target.RefreshMoveSpeed();    //Refresh move speed of the avatar
}

//Only viewing a fraction of the OnManagedUpdate method since alot of it's content is irrelevant for this post
public void OnManagedUpdate() {
    ....
    if( Time.time - _lastDepth >= _DepthThreshold ) {
        CalculateWaterDrag();    //Update the depth drag applied to the avatar at regular intervals ( ie. move speed penalty )
        _lastDepth = Time.time;
    }

    if( vDepth >= SharedGlobalProperties.SwimDepth && !target.CanSwim ) {
        if( _curFx == null ) {
            RetrieveFx();    //Pull an appropriate FX from the Object Pool
            return;
        }

        //Play the FX at the avatars position, but lock y-axis position to the surface point
        Vector3 pos = new Vector3( transform.position.x, vSurfacePoint, transform.position.z );
        _curFx.transform.SetPositionAndRotation( pos, transform.rotation );

        if( !_drowning ) {
            _drowning = true;
            _lastDrowned = Time.time;
        }

        target.OnDrown();
        return;
    }
    ....
}

public void CalculateWaterDrag() {
    //Determine how far beneath the surface the avatar currently is located
    Vector3 xzSurf = new Vector3( transform.position.x, vSurfacePoint, transform.position.z );
    float avDist = Vector3.Distance( transform.position, xzSurf );
    
    //Assign current drag / speed penalty
    speedPenalty = ( avDist / vDepth ) * _DepthDragMultiplier;
}

As you can see I simply determine the penalty by calculating how far along the way to the bottom of the volume the avatar has reached. Since this return a value in the range from 0 to 1 I also multiply it by a constant value “DepthDragMultiplier“, in order to get a value suitable for actual speed reduction.

As can be seen in the code, the depth will also determine what type of water ripple effects to play while the avatar is moving around. This also ensures that the correct effect is played if the terrain under the water is sloped and the character is moving from deep to shallow waters or vice verca.

///<summary>
/// Retrieves a water-ripple FX from the object pool and starts playback
///</summary>
private void RetrieveFx(){
    ControlledFx fx = null;

    //Select appropriate particle system
    if( vDepth < _SmallRipplesDepth ){
        //Play a smaller style of ripple effect
        fx = GameObjectPool.Current.PullCommonFx( CommonFxNames.W_PuddleRipples );
    }
    else if( vDepth < SharedGlobalProperties.SwimDepth ){
        //Play common water ripples effect
        fx = GameObjectPool.Current.PullCommonFx( CommonFxNames.W_Ripples );
    }
    else{
        if( target.CanSwim ){
            //Play ripples effect of type "SwimRipples"
            fx = GameObjectPool.Current.PullCommonFx( CommonFxNames.W_SwimRipples );
        }
        else{
            //Play ripple effect of type "DrownRipples"
            fx = GameObjectPool.Current.PullCommonFx( CommonFxNames.W_DrownRipples );
        }
    }

    if( fx == null ){
        Debug.LogWarning("WaterTracker could not retrieve a VFX");
        StopManagedUpdate();
        return;
    }

    _curFx = fx;            //Cache the located effect
    _curFx.FireFxCheap();   //Play the located effect
}

---

Buoyancy

The surface range will be used to compare how much beneath or above the surface the object is and adapt force applied in an appropriate manner.

I also added a property of “water drag“, this property is modified by the current submergence of the object and the end product will be used to manipulate the power of the force or gravity applied to the Rigidbody of the object, objects in water usually have alot more velocity if floating up from the bottom but when at the surface the velocity is no longer as agressive- this was the behaviour that I intended to simulate with the help of this property.

Additionally, a reference to the water volume affecting the object was also required since the depth at the object’s position is compared alot.

---

Moving Water

While creating effects for the water system, one of the assets created was a waterfall- it looked really stupid though to have a waterfall but when looking at the source, or volume from which the water came from there was no movement. For obvious reasons I decided to create some assets for moving water. This could be achieved by writing a shader to handle I guess, but for example, rivers or streams can often bend and turn alot, and I don’t know how to make a really adaptable shader for this so I decided to try using particle systems for the moving water instead. I’ve only created a prototype effect this far but I like the result, with some more experimenting it could turn out quite nice I believe.

But back on track, the moving water presented an obstacle that I hadn’t thought of, objects floating in the water volume would not follow the water flow, but instead just float near the same position. This was easily fixed though by creating triggers that apply constant force to objects within it’s bounds if those objects are in a floating state, and then positioning those triggers along the water’s path.

Example of the ConstantForce script can be seen below:

public Vector3 forceDir; //Direction of the force, relative to this object's rotation
public float force; //Power of the force applied
private List< Rigidbody > _bodies; //List to hold all updated rigidbodies

public void OnTriggerExit( Collider other ) {
     if( (other.CompareTag( Tags.Corpse ) || other.CompareTag( Tags.Item )) && _bodies.Contains( other.attachedRigidbody )) {
         //Remove the target from the list of updated bodies
         _bodies.Remove( other.attachedRigidbody );
     }
 }
public void OnTriggerEnter( Collider other ) {
     if( (other.CompareTag( Tags.Corpse ) || other.CompareTag( Tags.Item )) && !_bodies.Contains( other.attachedRigidbody )) {
         //Add the target to the list of updated bodies if it has correct object tag
         _bodies.Add( other.attachedRigidbody );
     }
 }
public void FixedUpdate() {
    if( _bodies.Count == 0 ) {
         return;
     }
     for( int i = 0; i < _bodies.Count; i++ ) {
         if( _bodies[i ]!= null ) {
             _bodies[ i ].AddForce( transform.TransformDirection( forceDir ) * force, ForceMode.Force );
         }
     }
 } 

( Pictures above are the final result of water volumes after a custom shader was written for water surfaces)

---

Swimming

The first obstacle was easy (actually, all obstacles were easy to solve…) to sort out by using a similar technique to what I did for retrieving FX as included in a code snippet earlier in this post.

float submergence = vSurfacePoint - transform.position.y;  //Determine how deep beneath surface avatar is
if( submergence >= SharedGlobalProperties.SwimDepth ) {}   //Do some stuff

If the avatar is a defined distance beneath the surface I can thereby either flag the avatar as swimming, or if not able to swim have the avatar drown from within the if() block.

To stop the player from swimming into infinity, or reaching areas far away that were not intended to reach I added a stamina vital to the player character’s statistics. While swimming the stamina will drain and when out of stamina the avatar will drown. This obviously help when limiting the player’s swim range.

Since the avatar is not allowed to jump when swimming, it was critical to find a way to leave water volumes if there were no ramps or shallow water within the volume that would allow the avatar to start walking on the bottom of the water volume.
I’m making use of the code for mounting obstacles while not in water, by casting a ray in front of the player I can detect if there are any climbable geometry, and if so allow the player to mount said geometry and leave the volume by climbing.

An obstacle I had not anticipated were with floating platforms, as the player jumped or climbed on them they would not make any motion at all, this made it look like they were actually static objects just positioned above a water volume. I weren’t satisfied with this.

I made a quite simple work-around for this issue by attaching a trigger volume to the floating platform objects, when the trigger is activated by player motion a force impulse will be sent to the rigidbody component of the floating platform, making it move.

The Solution Organizer Utility beta is now available to download!

Don’t know what Solotility is? More info is available on this page!