NPC Quest Giver Tutorial

This tutorial will cover creating an NPC Quest Giver using Unity, C#, and Mixamo. We will have an NPC that wanders along a path and can be interrupted by the player approach.

NPC Quest Giver

This tutorial will build off the core functionality from the Patrolling Enemy tutorial.

Modify the Spotted Functionality

1. When the NPC spots the player, she should stand still instead of following the player
   
2. Instead of an attack animation, we will import a friendly “talking” animation from Mixamo
   
3. Import the new animation, and add it to the Animator Controller for the character
   
4. Remove the Attack animation and Trigger, setup the Talking animation as before, with a Trigger called “Talk” to transition to the Talking animation
   
5. Change the Animation trigger in the script
   
6. We also want to stop the character from returning to her patrol, so we will add a bool at the top called “talking”
   
7. And check for that bool  in our distance check in Update
   
8. We’ll also add OnTriggerExit to set the character back to her patrol
   
9. It would also help if she looks at us while she’s talking
   
10. Lastly, add popup text for the NPC’s dialogue using GameObject > UI > Text
    
11. Decide what your Quest Prompt should say, and remember to bind the text object’s Rect Transform to the bottom of the screen
    
12. Disable the text object by default, we will toggle it on from the script
    
13. Add using UnityEngine.UI to the top of the script and make a public GameObject for the quest text
    
14. Set the QuestText true and false in the appropriate places
    
15. Drag the QuestText to the empty GameObject slot on your character
    
16. Be sure to test!

Quest Items and Activating the Quest

1. Create a new C# script for the Quest Item (QuestItem.cs)
2. Find a model to use as the Quest Item and give it a BoxCollider marked as IsTrigger, be sure the collider goes around the entire object
   
3. Attach the QuestItem script to the object
4. In the QuestItem script, add the OnTriggerEnter function
   
5. Create a public bool to keep track if the player has collected the item
   
6. If the colliding object is the player, set that tracking bool to true
   
7. Back in the character’s script, we need a bool to keep track if the quest item was found
   
8. And we need a public QuestItem to link to the quest item object in the scene
   
9. In the character’s Update function, check to see if the quest item was collected
   
10. If it was collected, we want to destroy it
    
11. And we only want to run this check until it has been found, otherwise this check will throw an error after the object is destroyed
    
12. Be sure to link the Quest Item to the public slot on the character’s script
    
13. At this point if you test, the Quest Item should disappear when you collide with it
14. We should also add a public bool in the character’s script to activate the quest after the player talks to her
    
15. Activate the quest when the player talks to her
    
16. In the QuestItem script, we need a public reference to the character’s script (in this case I left it called Enemy.cs from the previous tutorial, even though it is now used as an NPC)
    
17. Before collecting the item, check if the questGiver’s quest is active
    
18. Remember to link the character to the QuestGiver slot in the scene
    
19. Now the cat can only be collected after the quest has been activated by talking to the granny

Completing the Quest

1. We need to add a new section to the talking portion of the character’s script to change the text if the Quest Item was found
   
2. Now to reward the player for completing the quest. Create a new Text object to show the reward, in this case I’m going to give the player XP
   
3. We want this text to be large, bright, and eye-catching
   
4. Let’s create an Animation to make the text popup more exciting
   
5. Attache the new animation to the Text Object
   
6. Open the Animation window
   
7. Make sure you have the text selected, then Add Property for the Text.Color and Anchored Position
   
8. Give it an Alpha of 0 for the start and end keyframe, and Alpha of 1 for a keyframe in the middle, so it fades in and out
   
9. Set the Y value higher in the last keyframe so the test floats upward
   
10. Now we need to trigger the animation. In the Animator window, create an Empty State
    
11. Set that as the Layer Default State
    
12. Make a transition to and from the Popup animation
    
13. Make a new Trigger in the Parameters tab and use that as the Condition to transition to the Popup animation
    
14. Remember to uncheck the box for Has Exit Time
    
15. Back in the character’s script, add a new public Animator to reference the popup text in the scene
    
16. In the quest completion part of the script, trigger the animation
    
17. Remember to drag the text into the public slot you created
    
18. Set the starting Alpha for the text to 0 so it is not visible from the beginning
    

Summary

You should now have a quest giver that requests a specific item, the ability to go and collect that item, and a reward when you return to the quest giver. This can easily be expanded for a quest giver to ask for a certain number of things like “collect 50 gems” or “kill 10 enemies”

Game Prototyping in Unity, Part 2: Art and Sound Integration

This is Part 2 of my short blog series "Game Prototyping in Unity" about my recently released tutorial. If you have not already read Part 1 I recommend starting there!

In the second module of my tutorial I cover integrating art and sound in Unity and adding lighting and particles.

The first step is bringing in your model and texture files.

Then you will create a new material in Unity. Unity materials have a lot of properties you can work with, but the easiest ones to start with are the diffuse color (which is just the color of the material), normal color (which determines the detail or roughness of the surface), and specular or metallic color (giving it a shiny quality).

When you are done setting up your models with materials and textures, you can turn each art asset into a refab and replace your whitebox with art.

Make sure there are no areas where the player can walk out of the level. You don't need to follow your original layout, just use it as a general guide.

Once your layout is replaced with art it's time to add some lighting. For this type of level I want to use torches to give it a medieval feel. So I used a fire effect from Unity's default particle package and made some modifications so it would fit with this art style.

The flame particle system comes with a point light, but I also like to add a couple more point lights around each torch so you can see the details of the torch.

Once you have your bright areas, be sure to give some thought to lighting your dark areas. It's tempting to just keep dark areas unlit and leave them mostly black, but that generally doesn't look good in games because the player really can't see anything at all.

If you want to keep the feeling of darkness but still give the player enough visibility to play, use some dark blue lighting to fill the darkest areas.

When you are done, you'll have a well-lit level that conveys mood as well as giving visibility.

The final step in asset integration is adding sound effects. Rather than attaching ambient sounds to the main camera, try adding ambient audio sources as 3D sound around the scene, so as the player walks the sound changes. This helps bring the level to life.

If you enjoyed this blog post, please check out the video tutorial on Pluralsight which will take you step-by-step through this whole process! The next section will cover creating a character controller.

Thanks for reading!