What's with the lack of player prefab in UFPS 2?

[OOAlex]

This is really more of a feature request I guess. Is there a reason why UFPS 2 did away with the super easy to use, drag and drop player prefab format from the original UFPS? While prototyping (which far and away the majority of the projects made with UFPS or Unity in general fall into this category) it is incredibly unwieldy to have to watch tutorial videos just to setup a simple character so I can test a small idea... What happened to the days of just dragging and dropping a simple, encapsulated prefab character into the scene?

Can you please clarify why this decision was made and if you'll consider adding default prefabs in the future?

Thank you!

 

[Justin]

Version 2 adds the Character Manager which makes it a lot easier to create characters versus what you had to do in version 1. As a result it makes it really easy to create a new character that will have exactly the preferences that you are looking for instead of being tied to the demo scene.

 

[OOAlex]

I see. I definitely agree with the power of the Character Manager when trying to make custom characters when compared to version 1.

I guess the Advanced Player prefab from version 1 was more for ease of use, though. I have years of experience and a couple of small titles using version 1, and 99% of the time I simply drag and dropped the prefab. Prototyping was a snap. Then maybe 10% of the time (days after instantiating the prefab) I'd dip into adjusting/extending components on the prefab, if I was looking for something more from it.

Maybe just consider adding a prefab back in for everyone for ease of use as an option? As from what I can tell the tutorial videos we watch always creates the same instance of a character, which is what a prefab is. Then the powerful Character Manager can be used after the drag and drop to avoid dealing with individual components in the inspector like version 1. Tutorial videos can then be used to explain these less used, advanced options rather than the other way around.

Just my critique and something to consider.

 

[DavidC]

I see. I definitely agree with the power of the Character Manager when trying to make custom characters when compared to version 1.

I guess the Advanced Player prefab from version 1 was more for ease of use, though. I have years of experience and a couple of small titles using version 1, and 99% of the time I simply drag and dropped the prefab. Prototyping was a snap. Then maybe 10% of the time (days after instantiating the prefab) I'd dip into adjusting/extending components on the prefab, if I was looking for something more from it.

Maybe just consider adding a prefab back in for everyone for ease of use as an option? As from what I can tell the tutorial videos we watch always creates the same instance of a character, which is what a prefab is. Then the powerful Character Manager can be used after the drag and drop to avoid dealing with individual components in the inspector like version 1. Tutorial videos can then be used to explain these less used, advanced options rather than the other way around.

Just my critique and something to consider.

You can always go to the demo scene, drag nolan into your project folder somewhere, then go back to your scene and drag this "prefab" back in.

 

[OOAlex]

It's funny, that was my first thought, went to open the demo scene yesterday and it's full of errors with a link to the opsive site to fix them. Haven't used UFPS 2 in a long while so I gave up on that. I was thinking it'd be faster to go the route intended by the design of UFPS 2 and started the tutorials again to create a character, a gun, etc. In retrospect, would have been easier to fix the errors and grab nolan from there, but I think this still highlights my point; why? Why is this so difficult?

To go from < 5 seconds to instantiate the prefab to > 10-20 minutes to create said prefab (at least by the intended tutorials), I can't help but feel like there was a significant reversion in ease of use with this update, and something that may be easily fixable? Not sure of course, maybe there's no way to auto-update a lot of the things you have to manually press buttons to do (add UI, add Buttons, add Layers... etc, etc).

Again, just an observation as a user of both packages. I'll probably make a clean Unity project and create myself a character with working weapons in a working scene later to avoid the tutorials in the future.

 

[Justin]

Creating a prefab from the demo scene is what a lot of people do. The demo scene character contains some scene specific abilities so that's why it's not separated but it should not generate any errors. If you are coming back to UFPS from a long time ago I would create a new project and start fresh since a lot has changed.

 

[OOAlex]

So after another 25 minutes of messing about, I finally was able to get the copy/pasted nolan from the demo scene working in a clean scene. For about 20 of those minutes, my character could move and pick up weapons but wouldn't shoot, so I had to re-copy the character multiple times before I learned the proper way to clear the bugs it was creating in the clean scene.

Just to summarize, I very much still firmly believe UFPS 2 would be greatly improved with a simpler method of creating a simple default character. To say that "a lot of people" are having to get creative and make their own prefab out of the demo scene's character kind of proves my point.

Right now, there are 2 ways to make a basic, default character: the intended method to go through 5-10 minutes of tutorial videos (accumulating to about 20 minutes of work to translate the tutorial into your project) or copy/paste the demo scene's nolan (but you still have to read documentation to learn that you have to find the Update Layers, Update Scene, Add UI, Add Buttons, etc. etc. and press them manually), and then hope you get zero bugs (I wasn't so lucky, the dang Player tag didn't translate between scenes but it wasn't the first bug in the list which sent me on a wild goose chase of bug fixes).

Maybe a button in the Character Manager for "Create default character" or something? Which then proceeds to update the scene and project with the necessary defaults as well a basic, working character. Or perhaps a system that uses Scriptable Objects to save a character, where you can save/load whole character setups, and then have a set of default characters included with UFPS 2 (First Person Simple, First Person Advanced, Third Person... etc.)

Just my 2 bits on the design of the software, as the way it stands now it's a real pain to get it going. With that said, I still like the code, thank you!

 

[DavidC]

Just my 2 bits on the design of the software, as the way it stands now it's a real pain to get it going. With that said, I still like the code, thank you!

On one hand, I feel like it would be good for them to include a prefab Nolan, or at least a "demo" scene that's kind of a blank slate for people to start messing around in. On the other hand, I think they want people to do the tutorials so they can actually make their own models work.

I still think a blank scene would help, especially people very new to Unity. I had about 2 years of Unity before using UCC and still wanted something like a "sandbox" scene to mess around in. I ended up copying the demo scene and stripping out the stuff I didn't want in there, instead.

 

[OOAlex]

On the other hand, I think they want people to do the tutorials so they can actually make their own models work

Tutorials in UFPS 1 were for advanced options. The built in prefabs worked instantly, and if you had watched the tutorials at some point the changes were generally fairly simple and easy to memorize. But the prefab instantly gave movement and shooting out of the box in seconds, perfect for 99% of projects that are just prototypes of little ideas.

I still think a blank scene would help, especially people very new to Unity. I had about 2 years of Unity before using UCC and still wanted something like a "sandbox" scene to mess around in. I ended up copying the demo scene and stripping out the stuff I didn't want in there, instead.

I've been using Unity for close to a decade, and I agree with at least having a minimal sandbox scene. I don't think it's about how much time someone has been using Unity, you really only need a basic understanding to follow the step-by-step tutorials for the most part. The problem is something that can take 3 seconds (like having a blank scene with a default character, a prefab of a default character, or a save/load feature to instantly produce default characters) all take minutes. And in my experience, sometimes 10-20 minutes to do so, and frankly it's unnecessary.

Seems like we're about on the same page though. I like your idea of a blank scene with a basic moving/shooting character! Better than my suggestions and simpler to implement for opsive.

 

[Justin]

This is an interesting discussion so thanks for contributing. I am definitely taking notes. If anybody else has any thoughts on this feel free to chime in as it'll help shape future releases!

 

[DavidC]

This is an interesting discussion so thanks for contributing. I am definitely taking notes. If anybody else has any thoughts on this feel free to chime in as it'll help shape future releases!

Helping someone else on Discord today, and it reminded me of something else that confused me early on. I would include weapon prefabs in the files. Basically everything that's attached to Nolan in the Demo scene should also be a prefab. The thing is, if you search for something in the project (Sword in this case), you won't find the actual in-game object. This makes it harder/more confusing when doing the tutorials and trying to figure out why yours isn't working (because it's harder to find the Demo one to compare to, especially since it requires changing scenes).

Another thing is, the tutorial suggests naming your item something like "My Assault Rifle" (IIRC). This felt really wrong to me, especially if I was going to use that in my game (not as is, in this example, I would probably alter the texture and model of the assault rifle some, down the road, to make it "my own"). I actually did something I shouldn't have and just named it Assault Rifle (making it very easy to mix up with the demo one). Later, I fixed this by going back through and renaming all of the Opsive prefabs by adding a prefix of Op, ie OpSword, OpShield, etc. This actually helped later, too, since a lot of art packs will have the same names (Sword, Assault Rifle, etc.) I also kind of enjoy the connotation that they're "OP" or "Overpowered" lol. (Despite my game being fantasy, I'm probably going to leave the gun files in the background and make some kind of easter egg / cheat that lets you use them after completing the easter egg steps). In summary, consider adding a prefix (Op?) to the demo items.