Triggering World Animations In Unity Timeline To Tell Stories
How do AAA games make their worlds feel alive and interesting, even if all the player is doing is walking down the street? They consider their worlds as living entities, not just static backdrops. One way they do this is by using movement within their game world to tell a story. Let’s look at a simple, specific example… Here is a game scene from our RPG that we’ve been developing. The player is progressing along their path, heading towards the next steps of the quest we’ve created for them. In our game, like most RPGs, we’re using combat as a primary system of challenge and interest… but of course we don’t want to have one, long, continuous combat sequence. In this instance, what are our options for communicating story to the player? Well, we can have the player bump into an NPC and deliver some dialogue. That is usually the most to-the-point way of getting story across. For example: Crazy Bill: Quick, the town is under attack, the villagers need help. Player: Rightio Bill, I’ll get right on that. Or we can pop up a dialogue box on the screen saying something to the effect of: “The town is […]
