Answered Can characters eat?

[upayda]

Hi, just that question in the title.
- It is possible with the current capabilities of VAM to make characters eat or drink? (I mean literal food and beverages, I'm not being euphemistic XD)
- Also, has anybody released an asset or plugin that allows one do just that?
Thanks.

 

[hazmhox]

I don't really understand the actual information you need with that question :

- Do characters handle a hunger / thirst system ?
- Can characters be animated to eat ?
- Are there any animated food to simulate eating ?

There is no AI, there is no logic bound to the characters. So, if you want to do something (anything). You have to think about it, and create it like 99% of the time. If you want to make a character eat or drink, you will have to create your assets, create your animations (on your assets and on your characters), and if you need, code a logic for the thirst / hunger.

See VaM as Unity with several tiny limitations. If you can do it in Unity, you can most certainly do it in VaM. (with a bit of work, time and knowledge).

 

[upayda]

No, hunger/thirst system is overkill. I know this is not a game but a simulator, but everything else you said is in my scope (animations and meshes) and I'm open to develop them myself if needed.

So, according to your info, I should have to:
- Make new character animations/morphs.
- Implement new logic.
- Import new custom assets, like meshes and sounds.

Is all that of above possible in vam?

Also regarding the "if you can do it in Unity, you almost can do in VAM", I have one more question:
Is VAM "modability" also built on top of things like C# language, game objects, components, prefabs, coroutines... And so, like in Unity?

Sorry for asking a lot but I want to be sure before spending money on the creator tier.

Thanks a lot for the answer.

 

[hazmhox]

Depending on your goal, your bullet point list is correct

You could have also particles to simulate crumbs/water drips, alternative meshes to simulate eaten food etc... and just animating this in timeline without any "coding" logic ( just swapping models, playing particles etc ).

Yes, VaM IS Unity. Besides several security restrictions, you can potentially transfer like a copy/paste a series of scripts to work in VaM. Just like you can pack any type of assets in bundles to use them inside VaM as prefabs. And you can then script on top of them. You could even build a DLL if you want to. Which allows you to script directly within Unity and make it work as is in VaM... but on my side, I left the idea behind because there is not efficient way to communicate with a component from a DLL from the scope of a script in VaM (which limits a lot the potential user settings/tweak you can give to the players/creators).

This is more or less what I do most of the time, you could check some of my content if you're curious. ( a .var is a zip, you can see the source files )

( even tho this discussion might keep going on, don't forget to mark it as answered at some point if you think you got a proper answer... it is helpful for other to find relevant informations in the forum )

 

[upayda]

Thanks a lot for you exhaustive answer, I've decided I'm going to tackle my idea, then
If I have more questions when developing the plugin, I'll post specific questions in the forum, then.
Cheers.