Pixel Crushers Forum

Hi Tony and everyone,

I'm developing a space roguelike prototype at the moment, which means a few things:
1) It's turn based.
2) Most of the NPCs are not in a scene at any given moment, so they don't really need to be stored as game objects, only as data.
3) Even though they're not in scene, they still have a chance to get their emotional state and relationship values updated every turn by procedural events.

At the heart of the prototype is a utility AI quest generator which will use current emotion and relationship data along with procedural templating to (hopefully) generate interesting quests.

I'm considering using Love/Hate to manage the simulation of factions, personal relationships, and emotional reactions that take place procedurally across the game world, but I wanted to get your thoughts on this use case.

I know you've talked before about customizing L/H for turn-based play by adjusting the game time. However, this is also a case where I probably wouldn't even use the built-in gameObject components, since executing a lot of the procedural stuff would happen through code which generates events and updates C# objects in the background.

Does L/H seem like a fit for this? If so, could you say a bit about how you might approach it (or at least what you might be concerned about)?

Thanks as always!

Hi,

I'd create empty GameObjects just as holders for the faction member data. (FactionMember is a MonoBehaviour.)

As you mentioned, handling turn-based play is easy. Set GameTime.mode to Custom, and increment GameTime.time each turn.

Excellent, thanks so much. I will give that a go.

Glad to help!

Hey Tony,

Finally getting back to this project after a long delay. When you have a moment, I just want to confirm a couple of things about L/H and turn-based play:

1) It looks like the GameTime.mode I'd want to use for turn-based play is now called "Manual" not "Custom." So...
Correct?

2) Can I just set GameTime.mode once in the Awake/Start of something like a turn manager class and then forget about it? That is, will it then essentially just wait for me to increment GameTime.time after that, with L/H listening for when I do?

3) It seems like I can set GameTime.deltaTime to a fixed rate like 1/60th of a second using this approach, since turns will happen totally independent of frame updates?

3) Also, using this approach, will I need to keep track of the current manual time increment across saves? It seems like no, but I just wanted to double check.

Sorry for all the questions; up until now, Unity's Time class has always been a bit of a black box for me.

Let me know what you think, thanks!

Hi,

joeykid6 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:59 pm1) It looks like the GameTime.mode I'd want to use for turn-based play is now called "Manual" not "Custom." So...

Code: Select all

GameTime.mode = GameTimeMode.Manual;

Correct?

Yes.

joeykid6 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:59 pm2) Can I just set GameTime.mode once in the Awake/Start of something like a turn manager class and then forget about it? That is, will it then essentially just wait for me to increment GameTime.time after that, with L/H listening for when I do?

Yes.

joeykid6 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:59 pm3) It seems like I can set GameTime.deltaTime to a fixed rate like 1/60th of a second using this approach, since turns will happen totally independent of frame updates?

Yes, you can do that, but Love/Hate doesn't do anything with Gametime.deltaTime.

joeykid6 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 22, 2022 2:59 pm3) Also, using this approach, will I need to keep track of the current manual time increment across saves? It seems like no, but I just wanted to double check.

Yes. When you load a saved game, restore GameTime.time. Faction Members clean up their memory based on the current value of GameTime.time.

Wonderful! As always, thanks for the quick, thoughtful response. I own like 175 unity assets and you consistently provide the best support of any dev I've ever contacted.

Take care,
Joe

Thanks! Happy to help.