Pixel Crushers’ Tony Li has an impressive background as a game developer specializing in AI. He first started using Unity in 2010, while working on indie RPGs. That’s when he decided to take the next step: “Writers liked my dialogue module enough that I [wanted] to make it available to others on the Asset Store.” Shortly thereafter, his renowned Dialogue System for Unity came to fruition.
After publishing the Dialogue System, Yi tackled other more traditional development hurdles surrounding character-driven narrative games. More specifically, he created Quest Machine, a user-friendly, visual editor and management system for all sorts of quests – small to intricate, hand-authored to procedurally-generated. Then, of course, there’s Love/Hate, which allows Non-player Characters, or NPCs, to react dynamically to gameplay activity, so that designers no longer have to hard-code responses according to specific player actions.
Inspired by the many talented developers and creators around him, Yi is glad that Pixel Crushers’ assets are so often used to bring the narrative aspects of games to life – whether we’re talking about the deep role-playing of Disco Elysium, the laidback experience of delivering mail in Lake, or just about anything in between.
“My philosophy and the thing that motivates me every day is giving designers the tools they need to make their stories a reality in Unity,” shares Yi. “The guiding principle is making tools that a new developer can use to make a great game, [and] an experienced developer can leverage to push the technical envelope. Those developers, both new and experienced, are to thank for the tools’ constant improvements […] like gamedev itself, [this] really feels like a collaborative effort with the entire Unity community.”
Source: Unity Technologies Blog