Character System

I have recently upgraded to Unity 4 (free version) and after some testing have noticed a few changes to the system.
1) When climbing and catching an edge (Climb State Edge), if one shimmies around a corner and then releases(Climb State None), the character drops at an incorrect angle. It looks as though the angle is being reset to what it was before the character climbed around the corner, so it is off by about 90 degrees on the y.
2) When standing with back towards a Wall Climb object (not the buildings in the middle of the scene), pressing 'E' initiates a wall climb. Yet for the buildings in the middle, there seems to be an angle limit, and once the character has turned too far away pressing 'E' no longer initiates a climb.

I couldn't replicate this in the online demo, but I'm guessing that that still uses Unity 3. I created a new project and reimported the Character System from the asset store to make sure I was testing a "clean" version. Is anyone else getting behaviour like this?

 

Problem is with the camera for some reason it stays like betweeen the legs .. -.-

 

The variable cam of 'HeroCamera' has not been assigned. This is what i get in the console and it is buggy as F*** again

 

When does 3.1 be uploaded to the Asset Store?, it is still 3.0 ( Septemeber 24, 2012 ).

 

Hi everyone,

i will still release a version of the character system for the Mecanim animation system. It just takes a while to do it right and i don't want to provide half assed stuff. Please bear up, much has changed in unity 4.

@Promethon - you need to assign a camera to the cam variable in the HeroCam class. 1,2,3 let you switch between the camera modes.

@Hamesh81 - it is designed for usage in Unity 3.5.x. With some tweaking you can use it in unity 4 of course. Soon you will have the option use the Mecanim version i'm currently crafting for you guys ;-)

Cheers

 

Can't wait Robin! Kick it high gear and finish it! Lol
I'm sure it will work flawless when your done.

 

Thanks Archania! I hope so, will test it massively on PC and Mac! ;-)
If not , well .. you have my eMail and this thread to contact me^^
Cheers

 

Thanks RobinS, and you're right much has changed in U4, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't only me getting this
Definitely don't rush and do a great job on the next version as always. Looking forward to it.

 

RobinS, Nice work and encouragement for the Unity4 version. If you have time can you make a much slower, clearer video or even provide documentation of how to set up an fbx model.in the character system. Thanks.

 

So i managed to fix the camera issue thanks robin but there is another bug now... When my character runs and falls like even a litlle bit of distance if its the tutorial character its breaks apart and the ninja like becomes wide and unformed and its like they die... Is it because the character doesnt have weith or something?

 

@Hamesh81 - Thanks! ;-) I'll do my best.

@Daniel Talis - Thanks for your kind words! ;-) I have planned to do a step by step quick start guide for the Char System Mecanim release. Also it will require less user steps to setup a character.

@Promethon - You're welcome. Seems like the layers are not setup correctly. To fix this you just need to set the following layers when using the current system in a new project.
Layer 8 : Player
Layer 9 : Climb
Then in the top panel : Edit / Project Setting / Physics/ Uncheck Player-Player and Player-Climb
Shown here :

 

I fixed that it doesnt do this anymore and there are three last bugs i can see, first when i go into water the ninja doesnt swim, the weapons are there in the scene but not in the game and last but not least when the ninja sprints he kinda trips when downhill and just dies which is very annoying. You've helped me a lot and i know im irritating with those constant bugs sorry and thanks for being so patient and helpful

 

I think for all the new weapons, you need to make it so that you can actually aim like a tps. Maybe make another camera state that has a crosshair and will aim the players arms and gun/bow where ever you actually aim.

 

Moonlight, that would work good if you are hitting a key to aim, or adding a crosshair controlled by the mouse, or having it always in the direction of the player - which is usually in the middle of the screen. Just all depends on what it is your trying to do. And I think this might be something that you would add, not Robin, since it is a more specialized thing.

 

It would be great if the Character System can become a starter kit for Action RPG Game in the future.
1. Better Input Control System to switch between weapon, attack, move etc.
2. Simple Combat System with a dummy target.
3. More action e.g. Double jump, Dash, Defense etc

 

Does the Character System work with fully with Unity 4? When I upgraded to Unity 4 Free version and tried Character System V3 with it the attacks don't seem to respond. I get no response from the left or right mouse button. I have checked the Input setup and everything seems to be fine. The panning also does not seem to work. Can any body help? Is anybody else having this issue?

Robin do you any advice?

Thanks
Robert
AKA Venged

 

@Promethon - Can you dropbox me a link so i can take a look ? in 3.5.6

@Moonlight - The headlook controller is pretty nice for aiming, here is a LInk


@Archania - You are right imo, specific gameplay features must be tailored for your specific gameplay. Its nearly impossible for one person to cover all possibilities in one system ;-)

@yuewahchan - Sounds cool but too specific for a starter kit.

@Venged - It works like a charm in Unity 4.0 for me, when imported to new project. Have you dome any modifications?
I'm also working on a Mecanim version currently. This will give you guys the absolute freedom of choice, for your projects ;-)

Cheers

 

Thanks for the reply Robin. No I didn't do any modifications. It seems that Mouse buttons won't trigger the attacks. I'll try to load it up fresh again. Thanks for the mecanim work you have in progress. That will make it easier to set up our own characters.

 

Ok, yeah, I knew it would be something that I would probably have to set up myself, and thanks for the idea of HeadLookController. Can't wait for mechanim support! I was going to try and update it myself... but I think I'll just wait, lol.

 

I just wanted to point out how often Robin visits this thread an answers our questions.
A lot of people aren't so helpful they just make something and say here ya go figure it out and pay me

I still have yet to buy this since you keep teasing with the mentioning of a new version lol

 

@Nubz, yes this is definitely true, I've bought a few assets in the past and many creators aren't very supportive of their products. Robin definitely sets a great example and we're very fortunate

@Robin, I have been doing some testing and implementing with the HeroPhysics/ragdoll script and I noticed some strange behaviour. In the V3 online demo, after going into a ragdoll state the character then nicely blends into one of the two get up animations after a short period of time. When I test the same in a clean copy of a V3 project, once in ragdoll mode the character lays crumpled on the ground for quite a while and then is thrown several metres into the air. I haven't seen the get up animations working in my project scene at all yet. Does anyone else get this kind of behaviour? I remember getting similar results when I did my first testing back in Unity 3.5, but it seems the same in U4.

 

Thanks for your kind words guys!

@Hamesh81 - This could be the caused by self collision when in ragdoll modus. It can easily be solved with the steps mentioned by me in the first post from this page as the answer to Promethon, so basicly by setting layers and collision settings. This could also be done via script but its more save this way if your project has already a layer setup.
Hope this helps ;-)

 

Hey Robin great asset package but I am still having a trouble with a few things. When I have the animation for some animations (such as the Dance and unarmed kick) the camera zooms in really quickly to my character. I also am having some trouble with the camera and looking around because sometimes my mouse is going all over. Is there a way to lock the mouse in at the center of the screen and hide it. My last problem is that when I am walking uphill and and while pressing W I do a punch and hold the Fire1 input down the animation stops playing for walking and it goes to idle.

 

Yes that was exactly it! Thanks a lot Robin you're a champ.

I have 2 other question about the ragdoll. First, is there some way to limit the rotation of the limbs when the character enters ragdoll mode? Most of the body parts are fine, but the head in particular seems to like to wobble a lot when the character's lying in a crumpled heap. I don't mind some movement but the head (and sometimes the arms) keeps wobbling at the same speed and I think it would look more realistic if it's movement had some drag factor which slowed it over time. Either that or I might just simply freeze the rigid body rotation. What are your thoughts?

Also, and this is probably more a case with my camera system than the character system itself, but whenever I enter ragdoll mode my camera always jumps about half a meter up on the y axis, on exit it goes back to the correct position. I am using a different camera system, not the one that comes with the character system. I'm wondering, does something change in the character's hierarchy when ragdoll mode is entered? I'm going to ask the camera asset creator about this also, just wanted to know if you had any thoughts on this

 

@Pirogun - Thanks a lot! ;-)
To your concerns; i couldn't reproduce this behavior here, which version of Unity are you using ? Can you dropbox me a project link?
Cursor: you can use the Screen class to do this : http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/Screen-lockCursor.html
To the last problem; works for me here, Also a project link would be a great help.

@Hamesh81 - Glad to hear that! ;-)
I would try to archive it by adjusting the character joints or by setting the velocity for the limbs rigid body.
For the drag you can use the rigidbodys drag variable, just play with it ;-)
There is nothing changed in hierachy when entering rag doll mode. I guess it has to do with camera damping of your camea script, since the parent transform need to follow the rag doll.

Cheers!

 

Hey Robin I will try using the Cursor lock as you mentioned and a link to my demo is http://www.desolategames.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Web.html I also found a bug that when you sprint up the bridge in the demo and jump you can do a really long distance jump that is out of place. Thank You

 

I found out why the zoom was happening it was because I forgot to put on the Player layer

I have another problem though. I got rid of some other problems but now a problem I have is that the character's hands are going inside or brushing way to close to his body

In Blender the animations look perfect so I am not sure why they look really weird in Unity

 

Hey Pirogun, glad to hear! ;-)
If the animations look good in Blender you could try to reimport/override them. solved a similar problem for me.
otherwise you can fine tune the bind pose in edit mode.
hope this helps.

 

I was wondering how do I export the animations from blender again? I exported them with the model but the animations won't play because it is not the same name and I don't want to rename every animation in the script every time the character system updates.

 

Hey Robin,

I don't know if you are aware, or if this is happening to anyone other than me, but when I upgraded to Unity 4 Pro, the shader you are using for the character (D_N_S) stopped working. All I get is a black silhouette. I swapped in a Bumped_Specular, and he works fine with that.

 

@Pirogun - i like to import them separate as a single clip :


@RonHiler - Hey, thanks for pointing that out,
i made the materials Unity 4 ready and will upload them as soon as possible ;-)

Cheers!

 

Thanks Robin, I increased the angular drag variable for the head during ragdoll and it works a lot better now. As always, thanks a lot for your awesome help.

Also, I tested the ragdoll system again (I have it set to startRagdoll standup on separate key inputs), and I noticed that when entering ragdoll mode the "Ninja" gameobject's y position in the inspector increases by about half a meter, when standing back up it returns to normal. Is this correct behaviour?

It seems that the origin point changes between when in ragdoll and when in normal mode. For example if I select the "ninja" mesh the move gizmo is between the characters feet, but when I enter ragdoll mode the gizmo jumps to around the hip area. Could this be the problem?

 

I was trying to view your Demo but it keeps telling me to install the Unity web player. I have no problems playing other demos, so I'm wondering if there's something about your demo that's different. I'm running Unity Pro 4.0. Is your Demo (and the whole package for that matter) compatible with 4.0?

 

Hi guys,

i just uploaded version 3.2 to the Asset Store, it is an update to the legacy system, which make the materials Unity 4 ready, adds an updated demo and some other tweaks and fixes, you might like!
The Mecanim version is making good progress and will be added once it is ready.

@Hamesh81 - You're welcome!
I still can't find the half meter behavior here. Works and looks smooth on Windows and OSX. Do you notice this in the demo too ?
The camera follows the parent transform and the parent matches position relative to the root with Vector3.lerp while in ragdoll. You could play with the time multiplier to match you liking. (Line : 146 in the HeroPhysic script)

@Arcanor - Hi, the demo link from the Asset Store was broken. Does the new link here works for you ?

Here is the Updated Demo : https://dl.dropbox.com/u/39674817/CharSys_v3.2/CharSys_v3.html

Cheers

 

The new link is giving me the same problem, saying I don't have the player installed (but I do). I've tried installing it anyway and it still says I don't have it.

Perhaps this is a caching issue and will be resolved after a couple of hours.

 

Aha, I've solved it. The problem is the https in your link. There is some kind of security issue, and I guess my browser is stopping me from going there. If I change your link to http (instead of https) it works fine.

Thanks for the prompt reply!

 

Thanks for the info and you're welcome.

 

I've just purchased this package and I'm impressed so far. However, I'm wondering if you have any plans to integrate the InputManager (or some other method which allows configurable commands) instead of hard-coding keypresses such as WASD. Is this on your todo list?

 

I figured it out!
I Had parented the camera to the character which changed the origin point for the top "Ninja" gameobject in the hierarchy and therefore added the 1/2 a meter gap. Thanks for all your efforts Robin. Downloading v 3.2 now

 

@Arcanor - I'm glad you like it!
I thought about it, the problem is that you have to setup the input manager each time on import to a new project. You could copy paste the inputManager.asset file from your last project. however, it is changed pretty fast when in MonoDevelop -> highlight Input.GetKey (for instance) -> Find references. This will output a list of search results of the current selection, double clicking will bring you to that line where you can change the input on the fly. But You are right i should do all the input in a single method , already on my TODO list ;-)

@Hamesh81 - Awesome! ;-)

Cheers

 

Nevermind, issue was on my end.

Nice job with the update Robin!

 

These errors are caused by the standard Image effects from Unity 3.5.6f4.
It is necessary to upload in 3.5 to stay compatible with Unity 3.5 and 4 in this case.
When working in Unity 4 you can just ignore the errors and replace the image effects with the U4 versions.
The materials of the Ninja, Sword etc. are DX11 compatible now with the update.

Sorry for the confusion. ;-)

 

Yeah, sorry to worry you. I figured out to re-import the Image effects folder, and it worked just fine. Thanks for the update!

 

@Arcanor, I changed most of the inputs to suit my project as well. I found it most flexible to either use a public string variable for setting the specific keys, or by converting the GetKeyDown(s) to GetButtonDown(s) and using the input manager. I prefer using the input manager personally but then of coarse there's the issue of going from one project to another. Hope that helps.

@Robin, Glad to see the many small improvements in V 3.2, I'm happily porting over the changes to my scripts at the moment . I've noticed one still present glitch when climbing around corners. Whenever releasing/dropping down from climbing after going around a corner the character rotation snaps back to what it was before going around the corner, so basically it is off by about 90 degrees on the y axis. Is there a way I could fix this myself, or is it complicated?
Thanks Robin.

 

@Hamesh81 - Yeah, I am going to have to decide which of those methods to use. My concern isn't about how to make the changes, but rather I would prefer to keep using the vanilla package code as long as possible before I create my own branch. I anticipate there will be useful future revisions and would like to continue to incorporate them without much trouble. I mostly wanted to find out if RobinS was going to be making similar changes to the package in the near future so I could avoid branching the code for a while longer.

@RobinS - I could make the changes and submit them to you if you like, but I imagine it might be faster for you to just do them yourself? But if I'm wrong just let me know and I'll send you some proposed changes ASAP. Anyway, was this something you are planning to do soon, or not really?

Maybe I'm too squeamish about code merging, but it just seems like better practice to modify the code at the source (in the package itself), rather than having everyone need to make similar changes in their own projects every time.

As an old school programmer myself, I've had it drummed into my head to avoid hard-coded static values, especially when those values are referenced in multiple places. There should definitely be a single place to look to set those values. Frankly, I'd want to make these changes even if I were using the exact same keymap as in the package, just on general principle. But that's just my $0.02.

 

@RonHiler - No Problem, You're welcome ;-)

@Hamesh81 - Always nice to hear ;-) Yeah that's also on my todo list. It happens when the characters rotation receives a reset from the cache.
Which needs an update to "know" the actual look rotation. Isn't hard to do but much if you have so many many things to do like me atm.

@Arcanor - Thanks, very kind of you ;-), sure why not, it is planned for the next release. i cannot give you an exact date yet, sorry, but i will do my best as always ;-)

Cheers

 

Hi, I bought that awesome product few days ago and I wonder how to implement game pad right stick camera move, left stick as character motor work fine but how turn around camera by using second analog?

 

Hey Robin something very weird happened with my project. After I built my project for web deployment everything was good in the demo it gave me but in my project the animations started playing incorrectly and now every time I do a forward roll it loops forever and the idle animation doesn't play as I exported it. I made another player and set it up just as the other to make sure something wasn't wrong with the player but it still was wrong. The only thing I changed in the model was removing the detail bone because it made some animations look weird. i hope you can help me.

 

Sounds good. I'll send something over in the next couple of days.

 

Hi, this is a very nice plugin; I just bought it last week.

I'm having an issue where my character's (rigged with the Ninja skeleton) head spins whenever he strafes left or right. Commenting out a single line of code removes the spinning, but I'd like the head to face forward like it's supposed to. Any idea what makes the head spin? Could it be that the head is a separate mesh from the body?