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”

VR Fundamentals

There is a common misconception that Virtual Reality began with the Oculus Kickstarter in 2012. Oculus launched the new wave of VR hype, but this was not the first occurrence. In the 1990's there was a boom of VR being integrated into arcades.

Nintendo even released the Virtual Boy as a VR device for home use.

Even before the 190's, VR existed as a concept and has a number of early attempts including the Sensorama in 1962.

In 1830 we had the invention of the first Stereoscope, which allowed the user to view a stereoscopic 3D image.

Virtual Reality has a long and rich history. Today, there are a number of VR devices on the market. At the top we have the Oculus Rift (now owned by Facebook) and the HTC Vive. Both come with a headset that tethers to your PC, hand-tracked controllers, and external tracking devices that allow for positional head-tracking.

The positional head-tracking allows for what we call 6 Degrees of Freedom, meaning x/y/z rotation and x/y/z position. It also allows for Room-Scale VR which is where the user can walk freely around a VR room, about 2 meters in each direction.

Beyond Oculus and HTC, there is also a growing market for mobile VR including the Samsung Gear VR, Merge VR, Google Cardboard, and Google Daydream.

Mobile VR generally involved inserting your smartphone into a headset. It offers 3 Degrees of Freedom (meaning rotation only) but it allows you to escape the tether to a powerful PC. You can put on a mobile headset anywhere - on the bus, at an event, while waiting in line, even in bed...The only thing needed to power mobile VR the smartphone you already carry with you.

With all of these headsets on the market, there is a growing need for developers to create new and exciting content. This is a phenomenal time to get into VR development, because not only are there a ton of hardware options available to the public but there are also a ton of resources being made available to potential developers. The Unity game engine offers built-in VR support that will automatically work with a number of the headsets listed above. The hardware developers also make interfacing with their hardware very straightforward through SDKs that anyone can download.

There has never been a better time to become a VR developer. I've created a tutorial to help you get started on your way: https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/unity-vr-fundamentals

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