P0-P-172: Part 55: More guis, and Morph3D Character system

The gui’s are finally done. For now at least.

I have added in a simple “helm”  menu, which mostly does not do anything, since the player currently controls the helm from the keyboard. The player can extend and retract the wings, open and close the doors, and raise and lower the landing gear, however, and the status of all of these systems shows up on the helm display, which is useful.

I have also added in the tactical and targeting gui’s. The targeting gui shows a list of all targets currently in range, and they can select one of them, and then manually select one of the four missiles, lock it on target (which takes a certain amount of time) and then fire it. It will then track the specified target.

There are a few bugs still in the guis, and a few things I need to add. The damage modelling, for example, is not carried across to all of the other systems, ie, if the “tactical” system is damaged, it is still possible to fire missiles and use the tactical gui. The helm and engine submenu’s gauges don’t match up with the current speed or power settings of the ship either.

In addition, I have finally had a chance to evaluate the Morph 3D character system. I had planned to integrate the MCS system this week, but it seems that there is no way to create content for the system yet, and that there may be a new “MCS 2.0” system out soon. I have found references to a beta, which I joined and was given acces to an “artist toolkit” which seems to be for the purposes of creating art for the MCS 2.0 system.

I also noticed that the MCS male and female assets on the unity asset store are now €10.98, and I could have sworn there were around the €50 mark before. I may be mistaken about this, but that’s what I had budgeted for purchasing these assets. Is it possible the price reduction is due to an impending MCS 2.0 release?

The only other system that I think is comparable to MCS is the UMA character creation kit, which doesn’t seem, to me at least, to look as good as MCS. It also seems more geared for tradtional RPG type games.

Based on all of this, I have decided to wait for more information to become available before I add a character system to my project. I am hoping that MCS 2.0 will be released soon, and I may even be able to integrate it by the end of the year.