WIP: interaction UI, new animation system (Patreon)

This video is a first quick look at the new interaction UI built directly in Unity. In the video when you click (or point & trigger in VR) on the chairs for example, a new UI pops up that's inspired a bit by The Sims, with floating buttons that are options for that action. For example, "sittable" locations will have actions like sit casual, spread, lean, etc. The goal with it is to have a system that allows posing, actions and gameplay interaction with 0 menus, all directly in the game. I'm adding also text labels for interactive things in Alive Home to make things more intuitive.

I tried avoiding going this deep but I also ended up making my own animation logic from scratch. I tried making use of existing VaM animation solutions in the past but they're too complicated for me to use, it takes me too much time to work with them. So I went straight to the source, Unity, and built my own logic to translate Unity animations to VaM. It's pretty decent so far. This will allow adding more animation to Alive. It will also allow me to remake something like my first plugin, Dance Generator plugin, that barbarian 🐀🐀 got deleted from the hub. Maybe some of the gameplay elements I had in mind for that plugin too, like allowing you to string together specific dance moves like a choreography, or to have different models know and learn different moves, like a dancing skill.

Using the new animation system, I managed also to make a basic walking feature that will allow characters to walk, run, crawl around instead of teleporting. It works with double clicking on the floor or surfaces marked as 'walkable'.

I also built the animation logic to work with NPCs too, but I don't know yet how all that will look or work. In the video the ghost figure walking around is actually an asset NPC, not a vam model. The plan is to allow interaction and give commands to NPCs too.