UFPS 2 / Third person Controller

[bohnstudios]

So Opsive (maker of third person controller and behavior designer) is taking over UFPS from Vision Punk. According to their press release ( http://www.visionpunk.com/content/press ... Forces.pdf )it's a process that's going to be somewhat of a slow transition, but probably for the sake of quality. I thought this was pretty cool news since they are hinting at combining these two assets in UFPS 2. I feel that trends in AAA titles are tilting towards having both an FPS and a third person controller for players to choose from (usually with mouse 3 scroll as default).

Tony, since Dialogue Systems supports UFPS, third person controller AND behavior designer, I was wondering if you had any comments about this? I've been searching for discussions about this, but I can't understand why more people are not talking about it... I want to know everybody's thoughts on this announcement! Thanks!

[Tony Li]

I'm surprised, too! UFPS is the top first-person plugin, TPC is the top third-person plugin, and BD is the top behavior tree system. Maybe it's because TPC is relatively new. But since it's in this month's Madness sale, I'm sure it's going to be much more popular soon.

I work pretty closely with Justin at Opsive on integration, so rest assured that the Dialogue System will have good integration with the whole UFPS2/TPC/BD ecosystem. My goal is for them to be able to work together to make games like Fallout and Mass Effect, where the Dialogue System handles dialogue, quests, and maybe even saved games.

Justin's also working on a Deathmatch Kit based on TPC and BD. I wouldn't be at all surprised if the kit eventually also works with UFPS2. But UFPS2 is going to be a while in the coming. There's a lot to refactor to get it to work as nicely as TPC with multiplayer and inventory management, which are both big pieces.

[bohnstudios]

This all really good to know. Thanks Tony! It sounds like it might all be ready in a couple years when I'm ready to start on my next title. BTW, those games you mentioned and a few others could be considered a general baseline in terms of graphic fidelity that I'm aiming for in my finished project...so yeah I'm very excited to hear confirmation that the back-end gameplay functionality that is in the pipleline also has the top-tier quality level in consideration to either meet or possibly exceed. FO 3's controls from Beth are not-so-great...possibly unplayable even if it weren't for their alternative targeting system. IMO 3rd person controller and UFPS easily match or exceed what they've put out in the past. The Skyrim controls were much more fluid and FO 4 was light years better than FO 3, though still nowhere near as fluid as say just about any zelda title. FO 4 had some great ideas, but when you look past the unique art style/menus it seemed like I was ultimately playing a fancier more violent version of farmville. My current, literally double full-time 6,000 hour project "could" be described as "if KOTR, wing commander, mass effect, zelda and skyrim had a baby, but with less of a learning curve". According to my gantt chart, I'm about 2,000 hours into it and overall making awesome progress and will most likely be released in 2017. The majority of my remaining work is polishing and hiring/engineering professional voice actors' audio.

So yeah, that's all really good to know and I'm glad you made that comparison in regards to what you're shooting for because that is certainly in alignment with what I'm currently working on and plan to do in the future.