Official Experimental Character Controller package now available (formerly known as "Rival")

Hello @philsa-unity
I have a question about Update_PreventGroundingFromFutureSlopeChange (Slope management | Character Controller | 1.0.0-exp.5 (unity3d.com)). Currently this logic is using raycast for future ground detection and it works fine in most cases but in some cases it can give false positive isMovingTowardsNoGrounding. For example if CharacterController is moving parallel to the crack in the floor it can lead to isGround false (Basic sample video attached)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1PmsmcVT6680NIakGLPS81F0onmdYllvX/view?usp=share_link
Do I understand correctly that currently PreventGroundingFromFutureSlopeChange don't support such level geometry? Perhaps you have already thought about such a use case, and you had thoughts on how to prevent the issue (even if it requires additional performance cost).
Thanks.

 

hi, does anybody know how to make it work with terrains?


ad prefer not to extract the terrain mesh just to be used as a representation used for collision

thanks

 

Hello @philsa-unity,

I recall that in previous versions of the Character Controller package, when it was known as Rival, you had provided examples of abilities such as Dashing and Flying. I was wondering if it would be possible to access those same samples in the new package as well.

Moreover, I am interested in learning more about how to implement the dash ability. Would you be able to offer any guidance or tips on how to approach this feature? Thank you for your time.

thanks!

 

I've done what i said i don't want to do and honestly it yielded a very good result.

 

To classic users of KCC; how does this compare to Phil's previous asset, kinematic character controller? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

 

Hi, just wondering if there's best practice for handling vehicles? At the moment on exiting the vehicle I've been mimicking the teleport script, and setting the character's LocalTransform position to the exit position followed by:

Code (CSharp):

1.  if (CharacterInterpolationLookup.HasComponent(ControlledCharacter))
2. {
3. CharacterInterpolation interpolation = CharacterInterpolationLookup[ControlledCharacter];
4. interpolation.InterpolationFromTransform.rot = characterTranslation.Rotation;
5. interpolation.InterpolationFromTransform.pos = characterTranslation.Position;
6. interpolation.SkipNextInterpolation();
7. CharacterInterpolationLookup[ControlledCharacter] = interpolation;
8. }

However if I add a Disabled component to the character entity on vehicle entry, and remove the Disabled component on exit using a commandbuffer after the above, I get NANs on the LocalTransform circa 1/5th of the time. Happy to just disengage input and hide the visual part, but also keen to hear if there's a better way to do this. Thanks!

Edit: Still getting NANs even without disabled components, but less frequently. I think this started in the latest Character Controller version

 

How to best ignore certain collision hits with the character controller (similar to ModifyBroadphasePairs of the physics samples).

Is there a recommended way to modify the collisions (based on certain components etc.)?

 

Occurred to me that this isn't really enough to debug. If it's relevant, the entry trigger on the vehicles is on a dynamic body, so with the latest update, during setup, I'm calling:

Code (CSharp):

1. if (SystemAPI.HasSingleton<DisableCharacterDynamicPairs>())
2. {
3. var CharacterDynamicPairsSystemSingleton = SystemAPI.GetSingletonEntity<DisableCharacterDynamicPairs>();
4. World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager.DestroyEntity(CharacterDynamicPairsSystemSingleton);
5. Debug.Log("Removing DisableCharacterDynamicPairs Singleton");
6. }

As per the docs. The Character collision response is set to 'Raise Trigger Events' so it's pretty close to before the update.

This was the only way I could find to get the trigger data from the collision between dynamic vehicles and the player character. Once the player character is within the trigger volume, on 'enter' input, I remove an 'Active Player' component from the character and add the same component to the vehicle, via commandbuffer, which handles a few other things. This is when I had been adding a 'Disabled' component to the player character. On 'exit' input, I check a few conditions are met and then swap the 'Active Player' components again and remove the 'Disabled' component.

I'm increasingly thinking the NaNs are to do with the DisableCharacterDynamicPairs workaround but haven't yet found a solution.

 

After creating a repro project, I found one cause of the NaN bug was my origin reset system becoming confused by the vehicle triggering a reset before exit. Unsure why that's only emerged now, as there were some checks built in to ensure the player reset data stayed up to date.

So I merged a fix back to the main project, but I'm still getting the bug (albeit less frequently). I haven't found a way to identify exactly where it's occurring, but it does seem related to the presence of other physics geometry in close proximity to the vehicle on exit, particularly mesh colliders. As if there's a momentary issue with extricating the body from surrounding collisions? This is happening even if I don't add/remove the Disabled component.

Edit: I've been able to reproduce the bug in the repro project again, with the vehicle sitting on a mesh collider. I'll zip it up and log a bug report

 

Reported with CASE IN-40669. Thanks!

 

Thanks so much for your help on this- I'll give it a go tonight and let you know how I get on. Cheers.

Edit: Yep looks like this worked

 

Thank you for the answer, but in our case it's a little more involved than that.

We would need to get a potential component from the hit and check if the owner is the hit character controller.

If so we would ignore the collision.

It would be for a weapon that is shooting a rocket, and we want to have that rocket ignore the character who shot it, to prevent any possible collision.

The layer system does not work for this and also custom tags would not work, as we want the bullet to collide with other character controllers.

 

Thank you @philsa-unity, should have studied all the tutorials more, very interesting implementation and possibility to customize.

Thank you, that is exactly what I was looking for.

 

I have bought and am using the C# version that came out before the ECS version, I've done some changes to it where basically 90% of the variables of the controller into a separate structure which I called State.
So the character may be on the "Running State" where it moves faster, the "Swimming State" where it calls custom code instead of the default movement code, has no gravity and different air movement mechanics, "Crouched State" where the hitbox is smaller and it moves slower, etc
I assume the same can be done here too? I am about two years away from having the time to upgrade my project, but I will have to get onto it eventually.

 

The controller is broken again with the 1.0.10 release. There are quite a few changes, such as the TransformAspect being removed and other methods missing. Will the package be getting an update soon to fix these issues?

 

It shouldn't be broken. Those changes were pushed in 1.0.8 update. The 1.0.10 update didn't have breaking changes. I am currently using it on 1.0.10 with Controller package 1.0.0-exp.22

 

Never mind. I was trying to upgrade from an older project and that produced these errors on compile. But starting over with a fresh project compiles fine. Upgrading packages always seems to break Unity.

 

SOLVED!

Hi @philsa-unity

I'm just playing around with the character controller and I'm trying to get it to carry an object in a similar way as described in the ECS examples for Kickball.

I'm new to ECS so apologies if I'm doing something wrong.

I'm using first person and I spawn an object a short distance in front of the player.
I've created an ISystem to keep the carry object in front of the player and this works fine when i'm looking around but there's a lot of judder on the object I'm carrying when I move. I've tried running the system at different points but I can't seem to get rid of the issue.

I'm going to try re-parenting the carry object to the player instead but I just wondered if there was something else I could have done to fix this.

Edit: SOLVED
Putting the position update code system after the CharacterInterpolationSystem and before the ParentSystem solved the judder.

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. [UpdateInGroup(typeof(TransformSystemGroup))]
3. [UpdateAfter(typeof(CharacterInterpolationSystem))]
4. [UpdateBefore(typeof(ParentSystem))]
5.  

 

Hello,
I'm just curious about why there is a custom physic folder in the basic sample ? That's quite a good amount of files ^^
I didn't find any inputs in the documentation (but that may just be me).

Have a nice day !

Edit : I'm stupid, most of the files are for authoring like in the physics samples...
Edit 2 : Okay so it looks like it's just used to know if you just "enter" into your teleporter, but of course could be used for more. Or did I miss something?

 

Hi @philsa-unity! I just checked this package out yesterday and it looks like exactly the sort of thing I could use for my open world co-op project using Netcode for Gameobjects.

Currently I support ~1000 "moving" objects running around at ~60fps on my beastly workstation, most of my frame time going to the character controller update. I've got a perfect scenario to DOTSify several systems in my game, and thought I would start with the ECS character controller.

However, I immediately hit a snag here:

Code (CSharp):

1. /// <summary>
2.         /// Handles the conversion from GameObject to Entity for a character
3.         /// </summary>
4.         /// <param name="baker"> The baker that want to bake a character </param>
5.         /// <param name="authoring"> The monobehaviour used for authoring the character </param>
6.         /// <param name="authoringProperties"> The properties of the character </param>
7.         /// <typeparam name="T"> The type of the monobehaviour used for authoring the character </typeparam>
8.         public static void BakeCharacter<T>(
9.             Baker<T> baker,
10.             T authoring,
11.             AuthoringKinematicCharacterProperties authoringProperties) where T : MonoBehaviour
12.         {
13.             if (authoring.transform.lossyScale != UnityEngine.Vector3.one)
14.             {
15.                 UnityEngine.Debug.LogError("ERROR: kinematic character objects do not support having a scale other than (1,1,1). Conversion will be aborted");
16.                 return;
17.             }
18.             if (authoring.gameObject.GetComponent<Rigidbody>() != null)
19.             {
20.                 UnityEngine.Debug.LogError("ERROR: kinematic character objects cannot have a Rigidbody component. The correct physics components will be setup automatically during conversion. Conversion will be aborted");
21.                 return;
22.             }
23.  
24.             Entity characterEntity = baker.GetEntity(TransformUsageFlags.Dynamic | TransformUsageFlags.WorldSpace);
25.  
26.             // Base character components
27.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, new KinematicCharacterProperties(authoringProperties));
28.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, KinematicCharacterBody.GetDefault());
29.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, new StoredKinematicCharacterData());
30.  
31.             baker.AddBuffer<KinematicCharacterHit>(characterEntity);
32.             baker.AddBuffer<KinematicCharacterDeferredImpulse>(characterEntity);
33.             baker.AddBuffer<StatefulKinematicCharacterHit>(characterEntity);
34.             baker.AddBuffer<KinematicVelocityProjectionHit>(characterEntity);
35.  
36.             // Kinematic physics body components
37.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, new PhysicsVelocity());
38.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, PhysicsMass.CreateKinematic(MassProperties.UnitSphere));
39.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, new PhysicsGravityFactor { Value = 0f });
40.             baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, new PhysicsCustomTags { Value = authoringProperties.CustomPhysicsBodyTags.Value });
41.  
42.             // Interpolation
43.             if (authoringProperties.InterpolatePosition || authoringProperties.InterpolateRotation)
44.             {
45.                 baker.AddComponent(characterEntity, new CharacterInterpolation
46.                 {
47.                     InterpolateRotation = authoringProperties.InterpolateRotation ? (byte)1 : (byte)0,
48.                     InterpolatePosition = authoringProperties.InterpolatePosition ? (byte)1 : (byte)0,
49.                 });
50.             }
51.         }

That check for the scale being 1 is a killer since a big part of the "shenanigans" in my project comes with growing and shrinking objects in the world.

So, my questions:

1. Is there an ETA on when scaling would be supported? Even uniform non-one scaling would be preferred (and shouldn't be too bad to implement IMHO.)
2. If uniform scaling isn't a high priority outcome for you, is there a github repository somewhere I could contribute to? I didn't see anything in the official Unity github repo...
3. If not 1 or 2, I *could* hack my way around this my swapping the character controller component at runtime since ALL object sizes in my game are pre-determined (size of a dog, size of a human, size of a horse, etc.) But I'm not familiar with the latest ECS workflow so how would you suggest I go about doing this?

I'm leaning toward option #3, personally.

Thoughts?

Thanks in advance!

 

Thanks for the update! I'll poke around a bit when I have some time and see how it goes, appreciate the response

 

Hello, I'm playing around since a few days with the package and the samples.
Pretty interesting so far ^^
But there is a little "bug" that bothers me on every samples (at least Basic and Platformer) : ground snapping give some imprecisions and makes the character always moving on y-axis (like from 0,0001). I looked in the debugger and looks like time to time the character position before the check isn't the same. No problem when the snappings is off though.
Should I open an issue ? Is it something intended?

Have a nice day !

 

Hi again @philsa-unity , curious if you're planning on integrating IEnableableComponent here at all or if there's a way to disable movement updates that I'm missing? I've got a use case that would benefit from frequent enable/disable of the character movement but not the rigidbody (well, sometimes the rigidbody...)

Thoughts?

 

I'm not sure if that's enough because I didn't dive into it, but while waiting for philsa, something is actually in the code :

Code (CSharp):

1. /// <summary>
2.     /// A component holding the transient data (data that gets modified during the character update) of the character
3.     /// </summary>
4.     [System.Serializable]
5.     public struct KinematicCharacterBody : IComponentData, IEnableableComponent
6.     {

 

This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks for pointing it out!

 

Hello @philsa-unity ,

does the online FPS example can be follow as good practice when it comes to fps character controller ? How many players could it host if I may ask ?

I really like the way how you organized your example

Thanks

 

I am experiencing a bug with the ECS character controller package, reported via IN-53341. When I spawn new characters, these characters all refer to the same physics collider, such that modifying the collider of one character modifies that of all the others.

The characters are otherwise moving and acting according to input correctly, the "capsule modification to everyone at once" only occurs when I edit (Unity.Physics.CapsuleCollider*)phyicsCollider.ColliderPtr->Geometry, and I can see via entities hierarchy at runtime that the PhysicsCollider components on the characters all have the same hash. This seems like a bug with the character controller to me.

This occurs whether or not the character uses a PhysicsShape or CapsuleCollider, and whether or not the PhysicsShape has forceUnique set. Characters are baked via "KinematicCharacterUtilities.BakeCharacter(this, authoring, authoring.CharacterProperties);".

 

Did you check the "Force unique" option in the collider component?

 

Hey guys, just a naive question :
Why the Kinematic Character Variable Update Group isn't in the Variable Rate Simulation System Group ?

On the same stuff, why does the Kinematic Character Physic Update Group is inside After Physics System Group and not between Physic Simulation System Group and the After one, like the Statefull Collision Event Buffer System ? It looks more like a physic update extension no ?

 

You'll see in my comment: "This occurs whether or not the character uses a PhysicsShape or CapsuleCollider, and whether or not the PhysicsShape has forceUnique set."

 

Yes, sorry I missed that.

 

Hello, I tried using the character controller (1.0.0-exp.22) with the terrain workaround, putting the collider into a subscene. However the character falls straight through. It works well with other types of colliders in the subscene. I also tried dropping rigidbodies onto the terrain and they fall through the terrain collider but collide with other colliders.

 

Hi! I'm having some jitter issues when using a networked third person character.
It is still present even if character interpolation is enabled. The problem is more noticeable when running the network simulator and introducing some jitter and package loss.

See attached video as example (may needs to be downloaded to see the jitter due to compression)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MNeDy-IZPtu3Lj7RcSZuv8gKdFHKKO8u/view?usp=sharing

Is this behaviour "intended". I can observe the same behaviour in the "OnlineFPS" sample demo as well.

My guess is no jitter buffer is implemented in the interpolation, which makes the interpolation sensetive to.. jitter.

Thank you for your plugin, it works great, we're just curious if we have missed something obvious.

 

The problem is coming from the CharacterInterpolationSystem and the SimulationFixedTimeStep. if you force the PredictedFixedStepSimulationSystemGroup.Timestep to to be 1/SimulationTickRate the jitter will disappear.

More details in here : https://forum.unity.com/threads/pre...imulationtickrate-is-30.1489684/#post-9336656

 

Thank you Opeth. There indeed seems to be some issue with that value. When setting it correctly on both ClientWorld and ServerWorld, it works like a charm.

For anyone else experiencing the same issue. It's NetCode related and not this Character Controllers's "fault".

Solution:

Code (CSharp):

1. // Do the same for ServerWorld
2. ClientWorld.GetExistingSystemManaged<PredictedFixedStepSimulationSystemGroup>().RateManager.Timestep = 1f / tickRate.SimulationTickRate;

 

why when moving character IsGrouned is set to false ?

 

hhhh just install package, follow the document, and when moved thirdpersoncharcter in xz axis, IsGrounded be set to false.