VIRTA MIX #5: Game components experiment (Patreon)

This is something experimental I made for fun and to test some new things. This started as a tiny update to fix some issues with Fraemework (v6 which I posted earlier). But I got creative and ended up adding a few more things. I know a few of you are interested in building stuff for fun in VAM too and I'll try to release this to give you more options and things to do. It's gonna be called something different from Fraemework since it branches off in a more niche direction.

🕹️ GAME MODE

When you enter game mode (when you activate first person camera by pressing TAB), the game components get activated and objects come to life. For example enemies start moving around. Once you exit game mode, things return to their original place if they moved. So vam mode works like an editor and like you're used to, and this plugin brings a game mode that let's you play with some of these objects.

💲MONEY SYSTEM

There's a global player money variable. You can collect things and money increases. This values persists after you close the scene or vam.

📡 RADAR

There's a Skyrim inspired compass at the top that has a navigation points system. It shoes red dots for enemies attacking you and green dots for friendly creatures.

❤️ Energy/Mana, Health, Stamina

Stamina drains as you sprint and makes you run slower. Enemies and objects can drain your health and if you run out you die and the game resets you. Mana drains as you shoot and prevents you from shooting. There's some screen effects, like the screen gets a red tint when you're being attacked.

⬜ BODY

There's a very rudimentary body for the player. It's just a plank for now, not sure yet if or what I'll do more with it. I probably won't bother with adding a vam model as the player body because vam physics and performance would be too large of a cost. I don't know yet. But I wanted to add something to test things around and to not have the player be completely invisible. I also have a basic 3rd person camera system that's in AliveCore too ( tilde "`" key shortcut), and I thought of using that instead of the first person system. That's an option on the table too

🔫 WEAPONS

I only had one weapon in the video but I made the system moddable so that it supports different types of weapons that work in different ways. Different colors, laser behavior, damage, accuracy, mana cost.

🧩COMPONENTS

All these above are basically a modded Fraemework plugin. It works like Fraemework, and has all the UI and the extra features on top. But besides this main plugin, there are also a few small plugins that work as game components that can be added on vam objects.

These component plugins are very simple to use, at the moment they don't even have any UI. So there's no triggers, links or anything like that which you usually see in VAM - they're plug and play. I'll probably add some basic UI to them but it will be simple stuff, like item value, or enemy speed and damage.

💰 ITEM MONEY COMPONENT

In the video I added this component to the gold sphere object. Then, in game mode, the player can get close to it to collect the money.

🔥LAVA COMPONENT

This component makes the player lose health when touching the object. I added this on a cube atom and placed it over the pool in the scene in the video. This can be used in various ways. I didn't test it but it should work as all sorts of obstacles, not just floors.

🐱 CREATURE COMPONENT

This component makes the object follow you around like a friendly NPC. In the video I added it on a cube, added an extra cat image linked to the cube to customize it a bit.

👹 ENEMY COMPONENTThis makes an object act as an enemy NPC. When attacked, it starts chasing you for a while. When you get close to it, it gets alerted and start chasing you. It attacks you too.

💥 DESTROYABLE COMPONENT

This makes objects be destroyable. I added it in the video on two objects, a target and on the enemy cube. The target is just a basic cube. Simply adding the component makes it become something you can shoot and destroy. It also adds a lifebar to it. For the enemy (which is also just a cube with the enemy component on it), adding this makes the enemy destructible. Without it, it would be invincible. This is one of the cool things with this gameplay components approach, components can be combined to create custom behaviors.

💥 START POINT COMPONENT

This is a component that acts as a start zone. When you enter game mode, you get teleported to the first start zone found in the scene, if there is one. When you die and the game resets, you get sent back to the starting place.