Can we get some decent character controllers for once and for all???

Not_Sure · Aug 30, 2014

I can't be alone here that there is straight up a complete lack of tutorials or prefabs for decent character controllers for Side Scrolling Platformers and Top Down Platformers.

Right??

The Unity FPS and 3rd person controllers are great for their own purposes but the simply do not work for Platformers and here's the main reason why:

It seems that no matter how you modify the default controllers they will always hug the edges of ledges, which is terrible for the sake of Platformers.

In games like Mario the collider is a box rather than a pill so the character can get to the very edge without dipping down:

While at the same time being able to climb slopes:

So why is it that the entire Unity stratosphere littered with tutorial on how to edit the FPS controller for platformers, but there doesn't seem to be anything about how to make a proper controller?

I would really like to work on a controller that is freely available to everyone and can be edited for their needs if I knew where to even get started.

Does anyone have any suggestions?
(Oh, and I tried the Unity Hotshot book, but their controller is completely broken!)

Andy-Touch · Aug 30, 2014

Have you tried the new-ish Sample Assets Character Controllers? http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/01/17/new-sample-assets-beta/

Not_Sure · Aug 30, 2014

You know what, I have not.

I didn't think this would be in there.

Thank you.

elmar1028 · Aug 30, 2014

I would suggest you to make your own. You'll be surprised how easy it will be. It took me two days to make my character jump walk run and crouch! It can also push physical objects.

Plus its for your own sake. You'll not regret it.

zDemonhunter99 · Aug 31, 2014

Making your own character controller is incredibly easy and you can tweak it whenever you want since it was you who created it.

calmcarrots · Aug 31, 2014

Andy Touch said: ↑

Have you tried the new-ish Sample Assets Character Controllers? http://blogs.unity3d.com/2014/01/17/new-sample-assets-beta/
Click to expand...

You have the best profile picture I have ever seen lol

Anyways, like everyone has just said, write your own. Use these current controllers as reference or better yet, just modify the controllers to your likings.

Aiursrage2k · Aug 31, 2014

elmar1028 said: ↑

I would suggest you to make your own. You'll be surprised how easy it will be. It took me two days to make my character jump walk run and crouch! It can also push physical objects.

Plus its for your own sake. You'll not regret it.
Click to expand...

Theres a whole number reasons why you dont want to do that. Let me see if i can find the physx post about that.

One might wonder why we did not use the physics engine directly to implement the character controller. Here is the story.

In the past games did not use 'real' physics engines. However they still used a character controller to move a player in a level. These games, such as Quake or even Doom, had a dedicated, customized piece of code to implement collision detection and response, which was often the only piece of physics in the whole game. It actually had little physics, but a lot of carefully tweaked values to provide a good feeling while controlling the player. The particular behavior it implemented is often called the 'collide and slide' algorithm, and it has been 'tweaked for more than a decade'. The result is that players expect to find the same well-known behavior in new games, and providing them with anything else is often dangerous. This is especially true if provided behavior is not as robust and stable as before. And this is exactly what happens if you use a typical physics engine directly, to control players.

In particular, here is a (non exhaustive) list of typical problems you run into when using a physics engine for character controllers:

(lack of) continuous collision detection: Typical physics engines use discrete collision checks, leading to the notorious 'tunneling effect' that has plagued various commercial & non-commercial physics packages for years. This leads to three main problems:

the tunneling effect itself : if your character goes too fast it might tunnel through a wall

as a consequence, the maximum velocity of your character might be limited (hence also limiting the game play possibilities)

even if you do not tunnel, the character might jitter when pushed forward in a corner for example, because the engine keeps moving it back and forth to slightly different positions.

No direct control: a rigid body is typically controlled with impulses or forces. It is usually not possible to move it directly to its final position, you first have to convert the delta position vector to impulses/forces, apply them, and hope that the character will be where you wanted it to be as a result. Usually it does not work too well, in particular when the physics engine uses an imperfect linear solver.

Trouble with friction: When the character is standing on a ramp, you do not want it to slide. You want infinite friction here. When the character is moving forward on that same ramp, you do not want it to slow down. You want no friction here. When the character is sliding against a wall, you do not want it to slow down either. You want no friction here as well. Usually it is either 0 or infinite. However the friction model might not be perfect, and what you actually get is very little friction (you can still feel the character slowing down) or a very-big-but-not-infinite one (the character slides very slowly on that ramp no matter how artificially big the friction parameters are). The conflicting requirements for ramps also mean that usually there is simply no way to perfectly model desired behavior.

Trouble with restitution: You should avoid restitution. When the character moves fast and collides with a wall, you do not want it to bounce away from it. When the character falls from a height and lands on the ground, flexing his legs, you definitely do not want any bounce to happen. But once again, even when the restitution is exactly zero, you can nonetheless sometimes get a small bump. This is not only related to the imperfect nature of the linear solver, it also has to do with how typical penetration-depth-based engines recover from overlap situations, sometimes applying excessive forces that separate the objects too much.

Undesired jumps: You often want a character to stick to the ground, no matter what the physical behavior should be. For example characters in action games tend to move fast, at unrealistic speeds. When they reach the top of a ramp, the physics engine often makes them jump a bit, in the same way a fast car would jump in the streets of San Francisco. But that is often not what you want: you want the character to stick to the ground regardless of its current velocity. This is sometimes implemented using fixed joints, which is an excessively complex solution to a very simple problem that can been solved without the complexity of a physics engine.

Undesired rotations: Finally, a character is always standing up and never rotating. However physics engines often have poor support for that sort of constraints, and a great deal of effort is often put into preventing a capsule around the character from falling (it should always stands up on its tip). This is again often implemented using artificial joints, and the resulting system is neither very robust nor very fast.

To summarize, a lot of effort can be spent on tweaking and disabling the physics engine's features simply to emulate what's otherwise a much less complex piece of custom code. It is natural to instead keep using that simple piece of custom code.
Click to expand...

https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/physx/Docs/CharacterControllers.html

elmar1028 · Aug 31, 2014

Aiursrage2k said: ↑

Theres a whole number reasons why you dont want to do that. Let me see if i can find the physx post about that.

https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/physx/Docs/CharacterControllers.html
Click to expand...

Most of them can be easily fixed by tweaking the rigidbody settings. If UT could make Character Controller driven by rigidbody with little issues, we can do it too.

Mridu-Saicharan · Aug 31, 2014

Instead of using capsule collider, use a custom collider such that the collider is within the shape of the object. With this u the player won't stand on ledges.

Aiursrage2k · Sep 1, 2014

I think not otherwise physx wouldnt have bothered writing the complex character controller.

angrypenguin · Sep 1, 2014

The issue is that games often have differing requirements for their character controllers. It's actually a significant and critical part of your game's design - I don't typically use an off-the-shelf one for anything past an initial quick prototype.

superpig · Sep 1, 2014

Yeah, while it's quite easy to write a character controller, it's hard to write a good one. 2D platformed physics is complicated.

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