Player Start

Starting from 2023.2 version a new feature called "PlayerStart" has been introduced.

WHAT IS PLAYER START

As the name suggests Player Start is, cnceptually, a point in the game level where the player starts to play.

In the practise PlayerStart is a new object which position and orientation are assigned to the player when game level starts

HOW DOES IT WORK

When level starts PlayerStart load the Player and the GUI prefabs set into the project configuration.

Player prefab is a prefab containing the player character description and all it is related to it (for example the camera).

GUI prefab should contain the game GUI and player HUD. In other words contains all it is related to the game interface.

How to make the playerStart to know what is player and what is the GUI to load?

You must set them into the project configuration using the project configurator.

In the 2023.2 version a new tab has been included into the project configurator: the Game tab.

In the game tab you can set the player prefab and the GUI prefab you want to use for the game.

WHY USING IT

The playerStart has some advantage among the previous system:

To make the game level playable you haven't to insert complex player and GUI prefabs into the scene (they can contain a lot of linked objects and a lot of logic), but a single and much simpler object.
PlayerStart is represented as a static character model that helps you to work well with proportions and dimensions when placing other objects.
Using playerStart Level files are a bit smaller.

	It is always possible to ignore playerStart and directly insert player and GUI prefabs in the game level as previously.

HOW TO USE IT

To use PlayerStart you have to do the following:

Create Player and GUI prefabs
Use the project configurator to set the player and GUI prefabs to load in game levels
In the Create tool look for PlayerStart object in the Other Objects section and follow the procedure to create an object from scratch.

You can eventually move and orientate the playerStart to make player to be spawned in specific position and orientation.

	Unlike player Prefab, GUI prefab is not necessary. Basing on your game you can decide to use only Player prefab and ignore the GUI, or you can configure the player prefab in order to contain a GUI itself.