Third Person Controller (Third Person Shooter, Adventure, RPG, etc)

Awesome! Looks Great Guys, Can't wait to Demo this! Any chance for a Playable Demo of your Scene from the Game Kit? Would love to play it...

 

Thanks! Yes, when we send out the files to the beta testers I'll put up a web demo as well.

 

Thanks again to those that are helping us test this asset - check your email or PM for a link to the beta. We have a small amount of cleanup to do then I'll add a web demo. Here's another screenshot in the meantime:

 

Is anyone in the beta test group attempting to use this with Bolt, Photon, or TNET?

 

If they are they haven't told me. Right now I'm mostly interested in testing the core functionality. I plan on looking at multiplayer later - ideally I'd like to use the Unity 5 networking implementation but I don't know if it will be far enough along to be able to handle everything.

 

Will performance be decent on mobile?

 

Yes, it'll have no problem on mobile. It will actually include a set of mobile controls as well.

Related to this, I was planning on adding the web demo yesterday but ran into some iOS AOT compiler errors. It's working now on iOS so I should be able to post the demo later today.

 

Awesome Looking forward to Playing the Demo!

 

The shooter demo has been added! You can play it here. If you hit any bugs or if something doesn't work properly definitely let me know. We are close to submitting with only having to write the documentation.

Also, if somebody knows how to hide the cursor for the web player I'd love to know... Screen.lockCursor isn't working.

 

bla... it's impossible to play test it without the mouse lock, i'm not at home with access to my unity projects otherwise I would tell you how to do it.

But definitely add the Mouse Lock, as I personally wouldn't be able to give good feedback without it.

 

I just figured out how to disable it.. I had to call Screen.lockCursor within OnMouseDown. The new version is up there so you can give it another try.

 

Hello, nothing works for me in the demo, no keyboard keys (except w-s-a-d), and the mouse buttons do nothing. I am running Internet Explorer.

Some questions already though (I hope this comes across as constructive feedback):

1. Can the speed of the strafing and backward movement be increased? Right now they are so slow it's somewhat useless for avoiding attacks.

2. Can the aiming reticule be placed a bit higher (maybe at head level) instead of in the center of the screen? It makes it seem I'm aiming slightly up when I place the reticule on a target directly in front of me.

3. Can we easily put in our own mecanim animations? Not to be overly critical but the character moves somewhat like a girl in my opinion.

Thank you, can't wait to try actually shooting the weapons and looking forward to see this great asset make progress!

 

Thanks for the feedback - it's all good and I definitely want to hear it.

hmm.. I've tested this version on a few different machines (desktops and laptops) and haven't hit that. It's really weird that the mouse doesn't work either. What version of Windows? On a laptop? I'll try to see if I can get a similar setup.

Sure, working on it now.

The height that the character aims at is determined by an animation. The animation probably just needs to be adjust to follow the reticule a bit more. But you were able to aim with the right mouse button not working?

Yeah, it's using a regular controller so you can switch out the animations for your own but of course we want the animations to be good to begin with. Can you give some more specifics? If the speed of the strafe and backwards is increased do you think that would help?

 

A PC with a i5 processor, Windows 7 64 bit, the Internet Explorer 11

I wasn't able to aim but I meant just the general "feel" ... if I walked around and put the reticule on turrets it seemed like I had to move the mouse a tad bit higher than felt natural. Looking at the pictures of the guy aiming, it seems it would alleviate it somewhat if there was some kind of IK that pointed the rifle directly at the reticule. Or you know what might be easier, raise the camera slightly so it's higher behind the guy.

EDIT: It's actually pretty subtle and I guess the animations are acceptable as they are... you know what I think would be quick fixes would be to angle his head down slightly like a badass when he runs (so he doesn't look like he's looking up all happy), and to change the weapon holding posture slightly so he has his right shoulder farther back than his left shoulder (have the chest pointing more to the right than pointing to the front). And fix the pansy unarmed running

No it's more of the general way the guy moves, he moves like an untrained civilian, and when he starts out unarmed, runs around with his wrists hanging down like a pansy (no offense ), and his head bobbing like a schoolkid. But because he apparently knows how to handle all these high-powered weapons I guess I would expect him to move more like a soldier or a cop. It's probably not fair to compare to a dedicated animator/mocap artist but maybe I'm just spoiled by this asset maker's magnificent soldier animations:

 

Also, would be nice to make the strafe/back speed adjustable... on some games I'd want to make him move slower and more tactically and other games move him around fast as a mofo.

 

By any chance do you have a joystick or controller connected?

Yeah I notice it now as well. Thanks, I'll update this thread when a new demo is posted.

Those animations are awesome. We aren't able to mocap it but we are going to try to get it as best as we can. You'll of course be able to use these animations. The character actually starts out with a pistol (its in his right hand but it's easy to miss) and is not aiming. There is a setting on the controller to always aim and I guess I should have this option enabled for the shooter demo.

With this initial release we are using root motion so you'll have to make a blend tree, which is entirely doable but not for this release In the back of my mind I am also planning on allowing a non-root motion controller.

 

Here are some examples of guys shooting like badasses imo... head and upper back hunched over the sights, chest more to the right causing right shoulder to go back, leaning forward at the waist, left foot more forward. Compared to your guy now: upper back straight, head just slightly tilted over the sights, chest more forward instead of to the right, right shoulder not that far back, standing upright at the waist, feet parallel.

It's a subtle difference, I guess I'm think more exaggeration would be good, like he's a spec-ops guy instead of a mere civilian. Just changing this shooting pose alone would make a world of difference in terms of badassery I think.

 

Yeah, I see what you mean. We're working on it now and I'll post an update as soon as there's a new version. For the problem on not being able to use the mouse, do you have a joystick or controller connected?

 

No I have no joystick or controller. It's weird because the wsad keys work meaning the webplayer is getting input. But nothing else works.

 

Also, will there be animations to put away weapons, holster the pistol, and maybe have the unused weapons show up on the back (and pistol inside the holster)? And thanks for your replies.

 

WASD uses an axis whereas the other actions use a button. I'm still trying to figure out why that matters...

No thanks for your help. It's good to catch this stuff early.

Right now you can put away the weapon by pressing the tab button, but he just puts it away in front of him inside an invisible holster. Placing the item away in an actual holster is definitely a possibly. It wouldn't be too hard either - mostly just takes animation support. The topic of a "third person controller" is so broad and we'll have to prioritize the feature requests based on feedback. We are thinking long term with this asset though and have a lot of plans for it. But the first step is to get you to be able to use the full keyboard

 

Do you mind going to this page and telling me what the output says on your screen after you tap the "G" key?

It should say:

"G" Key: True G

 

Webplayer is working perfect for me.

Macbook using 10.10.

 

@opsive - Same as what eridani described. Only WASD and mouse look work, no other keys, regardless of whether a gamepad is plugged in or not. When I plug in an 360 controller, it works fine to do everything, but keys still don't work.

Strafing could feel more responsive.

A higher reticle would be better. An option for an animated reticle would be great (like a locking-on animation when it passes over a target, as in games like Mass Effect).

The mouse look feels a little sluggish. The camera lag may be something configurable in the asset, though, so maybe this isn't an issue. Similarly, rotating with the gamepad is slower than I'd expect, but disregard if this is a configurable value.

In the link you sent eridani, when I press "G" it does say "True".

My go-to animation source is usually Mixamo, but eridani's link to Kubold's Rifle Animset Pro is better. Can you tweak your animations to look similar?

Test machine: Win7 64-bit, Chrome 39.0.2171.95m, with and without Xbox 360 controller.

 

@Gametyme & @TonyLi -

Thanks for trying it out. I wrote my own wrapper for the input to get around the future problem of the asset not being listed in the Complete Projects category while still needing to update the InputManager (for those who don't know, any asset in the Complete Projects category will automatically import all of your project settings). I have since found a way to update Unity's InputManager through editor scripting so I have all but removed my wrapper on top of Unity's input system. This will actually make things better in the long run because it'll automatically work whenever Unity updates their Input system. I just uploaded a new build so if you could try it again that would be great.

The version that I just uploaded doesn't have the change but I'll make it now, thanks. I like the Mass Effect idea as well. I'm not sure how much time I should put in the current GUI system. I am using OnGUI to allow us to submit with Unity 4.3 and I don't think anybody will really use the GUI code that I have in place right now. I should probably do something similar to what you do with the Dialogue System and just add a uGUI package so that more people can use it. I've written it down.

Yeah, all of those are configurable. I'll increase it slightly.

We have a new set of walking, running, and backwards movement done. We're working on the strafe right now to look similar to Kubold's.

All of this feedback is great - thank you all

 

Instead of aiming all the time what about something like this? Actually for me the animations are not a big deal as I'd say most of us have a few carry pistol animations lying around

 

Perfect!

 

A little better! And I'm really glad you're not just wiping out input settings by including an InputManager.asset in the package. Your editor scripting solution to add missing input definitions sounds perfect.

Here's what works:
WASD: Yes
Left Mouse Button: No
Right Mouse Button: Yes
Space: Yes
C: No
Shift: Yes
R: No
Q or E: Yes
Tab: Yes
G: No
F: No

There's a lot of character model clipping if you run up to a wall or other obstacle. Two "must haves" are never letting the camera clip anything (obstructions behind the character, or the character model itself) and almost never clipping the character's body into other objects. The latter is harder to do, so I think most players are willing to let it slide. But the one thing in my experience that separates professional games from amateur is camera clipping. The demo does a fantastic job of preventing camera clipping, BTW, the best I've seen in any cameras on the Asset Store.

While you're tweaking animations, could you look at the jump? The character doesn't seem to jump so much as float up from a fully-upright standing position. His landing animation is just fine, though.

 

All same for me. I do get the "true" when I hit G on the other demo.

 

Justin

I have a major issue with this asset.

I can't find the 'buy now' button!

;-)

But on a serious topic. Will I be able to easily swap out the muzzle and impact particle effects for my own?

Will it be easy enough for me to add my own raycast and enemy damage logic using something like Playmaker? (sorry for the newb questions).

 

I've been learning Behavior Designer lately, and the level and quality of service that Opsive provides is world-class. I'll test the demo a bit this weekend, but this seems like an obvious buy for me.

This is probably a stupid question, but I should be able to use this pack for a top-down game, right? Should be just a bit of messing around with the camera? You touched on this previously in this thread, and my understanding is that if it's not already possible, there will be an update to make it possible?

And I'm hoping/assuming this will come with most/all of the third party integration that Behavior Designer has?

 

Yes, here's a screenshot of the ShootableWeapon component for the Assault Rifle:

Since the enemies are more AI related I'll be adding a set of Behavior Designer tasks with the initial release and I'll try to add Playmaker actions as well. It shouldn't be too hard since they both are similar but we'll see how the timing goes. If it's not available immediately at release then it will be shortly after.

That really means a lot, thank you!

Right now there are two different ways you can setup your character: player controlled or AI controlled. If it is AI controlled then it won't use the camera to determine the direction to aim. If it is player-controlled then it will use the camera to aim and in a top down game you will want it to be more similar to if it was controlled by an AI in that it doesn't look in the direction of the camera. Since you are already the second person to ask about this it sounds like it'll be a popular request so I'll make sure to add it to the first update.

It will definitely be integrated with Behavior Designer In addition, we're planning on taking the integration a little bit further than some of the other Behavior Designer integrations in that it will be integrated with the Movement Pack as well and at least one more add-on pack that we will be working on.

 

I just uploaded a new version of the shooter demo. It has a new set of animations and a lot of bug fixes (including a fix which makes the weapon look at the crosshairs). Since the animations were such a major topic the past few posts I want to get some opinions on the current set - what do you think? Is there anything else that we should take a look at before submission?

http://www.opsive.com/assets/ThirdPersonController/shooterdemo.php

 

Thanks for the fast changes! Some more feedback...

1) I still can't shoot with the left mouse button but I can throw grenades now! That said, I think the grenade throwing animation needs a lot of love...right now it looks like a placeholder animation for a real animation. I think there needs to be a bit more torso and shoulder involved even for a short toss.

2) Strafing is faster but still slow enough to seem to be useful only while aiming and firing... is it possible to add a strafe RUN animation for whenever the weapon is not aimed? Right now the guy can forward all over the place, but can only walk sideways -- it's a bit unexpected while I'm running around roaming the level.

Only being able to walk backward slowly can sort of make more sense, but I wish there was a setting for RUN backward as well.

In fact, the most ideal scheme imo would be the have the character run forward, sideways, and backward, and slow down to a walk forward, sideways, and backward when a key is pressed (perhaps the aim key or a separate walk key).

 

3) I also notice the weapon muzzle bobbing up and down while aiming and walking. I don't know if the shots coming out of the barrel also go up and down because I can't shoot at the moment, but I think it would look weird if the rifle was pointed up away from the crosshair yet the bullets exit straight for the crosshair.

There is actually a technique that real spec op soldiers use to eliminate muzzle bobbing while walking and shooting... it's called the "groucho walk," lol you can google it, no joke. I think it wouldn't be unrealistic to always have the rifle pointed at the crosshair even while moving.

 

Everything that @eridani said, especially the animations. Can you make everything more exaggerated?

• Grenade: Mixamo's toss grenade animation is a sissy throw, but it's a little closer to the mark.
• Run: Here's their rifle run, too. When running without aiming, please pump the arms instead of letting them hang limply at the sides.
• Sprint: And when the character sprints, he needs to lean into it deeper. Sprinting really should be a separate animation, not a sped-up run/jog.
• Jump: The character needs to do a load into the jump, not just pop into the air. Here's Mixamo's jump for reference.

I recommend modeling the animations on games in the genre rather than real world sources such as the U.S. Army Rifle Field Manual. It's like how archaeology in Raiders of the Lost Ark is just a little more exciting than archaeology in the real world.

As for controls, RMB works to aim, but LMB doesn't do anything. All other controls work, except I couldn't test Reload (R) because I couldn't fire. Now that I know what I can and can't use for cover, the cover system works great. The camera jitter at the edge of cover is gone, too.

 

Thanks guys! Since the primary focus of this asset isn't a collection animations I feel like things are going well if the main issues are related to animations We're working on the animations now and I think that we are going to upload a new version with a new set of pistol animations and then as soon as those look good we'll add the complete set. I think that I found a fix for the unable to shoot issue as well.

With that said, I have a couple of fundamental questions:

• Do you like the name "Third Person Controller"? The only reason why I am questioning it is because this framework will work for AI and non-third person views such as top down. Alternative names include "Complete Character Controller" or "Ultimate Character Controller" though I feel like the word "ultimate" is overused on the Asset Store
• I am starting to think about how to package this asset and one of the things that has been successful with Behavior Designer is that the third party integrations and runtime source code is only downloadable from opsive.com. This has given people an incentive to purchase Behavior Designer instead of pirate it, and it also allows me to quickly update an integration without having to resubmit the base package. This asset is obviously a bit different than Behavior Designer but I am still thinking of packaging the scripts in a DLL and putting the full source code version behind an invoice check. Do you see any reason not to do this?

 

Yes, it's the most descriptive, and I think it'll get the most search result hits. People are more likely to search for "third person controller" than "ultimate controller". From the description, they'll understand that they can use it for AI-controlled characters, too.

I'd prefer source code. DLLs make compiles faster, but there really isn't an enormous amount of code, so I don't think it's much of a factor. Having the source code makes it much easier to dig in to see what's going on or to add temporary debug lines. Also, when you switch between DLL and source code, you lose all references in your prefabs and scenes since the script GUIDs are different. Putting third party integration (e.g., with Behavior Designer) behind an invoice check would be great, however.

 

Thanks, I'll stick with third person.

I'm definitely going to include the full source code, it's just that I was thinking of having it behind an invoice check. So the difference would be that it would be an extra download. In terms of the references going away, I thought about that and it would require me to reassign them but that should be only a one time thing when I initially add a new class. As a customer you wouldn't notice because the download would contain the correct prefabs.

I know that it sucks but really the only reason why I am seriously considering this is because of the piracy - overall it has worked well with Behavior Designer.

 

Do you have enough space to add it in the title, for example "Third Person Controller (also for Top Down, AI)"

I actually didn't know it could be used for AI characters until just now. Will the AI be able to dynamically use cover as well? That would be epic.

 

I don't know if Unity accepts titles with a bunch of keywords but I'd rather stay away from that as to me it looks messy (though I just realized that I did that with this thread title ). I'll make sure these "extra" features are really visible in the description of the asset.

There's not a chance that I would pass up a Behavior Designer integration like this I'll be included a basic set of Behavior Designer tasks at launch, and then add more integration as time goes on. I have a lot of things planned with the two assets. In terms of taking cover, I plan on adding Third Person Controller support to the Behavior Designer Movement Pack so in theory you should be able to use the Movement Pack's cover task and then tell the controller to take cover. Right now I haven't thought too much about the integration with the Movement Pack yet so we'll see how that goes. I also have another pack idea and a more advanced cover may fit into that.

 

What about platform-dependent conditional compilation? For example, Unity 4 uses Screen.lockCursor, but Unity 5 uses Cursor.lockState. If you compile to DLLs, you'll have to choose one version or the other. The Dialogue System has an enormous amount of code (editors, converters, etc.), so I went the DLL route, with source code provided in a package right next to the DLLs. But I have to provide separate DLLs for Unity 4 and Unity 5. I also had to go through hoops to make it WinRT compatible because I didn't want to have to provide four sets of DLLs (Unity 4 normal, Unity 4 WinRT, Unity 5 normal, Unity 5 WinRT). Just something to keep in mind. I totally understand the piracy concern.

You can always just add them as keywords on the DLLs. Asset Store searches include these keywords.

 

I have no problems with an invoice check. Though I primarily buy and manage assets through the Asset Store, and that would add a little bit of hassle. But I understand the need for it.

 

Interested in this on early testing, and give you a hand if you want a photon integration !
I think the animation you use dont do justice, with more tweaks it would look really good.
when you jump very high and fall back it sometime bounce on the ground, and the animation transition between idle> shoot is too slow!

 

Actually this does feel very slow, don't know why I didn't see that before.

Also I have a question about the cover system. Right now it seems like the turrets aim at the player's center of mass, which is below the top of the concrete barriers. So the shots hit the barrier whether the player is taking cover or not.

For a cover system to make sense, shouldn't enemy shots be aimed at the player's upper chest area (to shoot over the barriers), with perhaps some variance to sometimes hit the player with a headshot -- one hit headshot kills would make the player VERY serious about taking cover lol.

But it also seems the player's head sticks up past the concrete barriers when taking cover. Can you have the character crouch down more, or raise the barriers' heights?

Thanks!!

 

Thanks @TonyLi and @OnePxl for the DLL feedback - I think that I'll go with that. I can see wanting to modify the source for this asset a lot more than something like Behavior Designer so instead of including multiple DLLs I'll just say download the source code for full Unity 5 or Windows Store support.

@Damien Delmarle - Thanks for the Photon offer - I'll let you know if we decide to go that route. I was hoping to have a new version up by now with the animation tweaks but it's taking a little bit longer than I expected. It shouldn't be too long now.

@eridani -

Right now the turret is a very simple component that can only rotate along the y axis. It also doesn't have any spread parameters like normal weapons do so when it shoots it will always be in the forward direction. Your point definitely makes sense about taking cover with the turret, and I'll expand on the turrets capabilities in a future update. In addition to this, the turret can only track a single target. It would be nice if the turret would rotate to a new target as soon as the closest target has died.

 

The new shooter demo will be online when it gets done uploading in a couple of minutes. All of the controls should work and the animations have been improved. Assuming everything goes well I hope to submit tomorrow. The documentation is mostly complete and I just need to add the screenshots. Now is the tough part of coming up with the Asset Store icon

Edit: It's done uploading -

http://opsive.com/assets/ThirdPersonController/shooterdemo.php

 

Everything's working for me! Jump and strafing look much better now. The first thing on my wishlist is vaulting (e.g., over those concrete barriers).

I noticed a couple issues:

1. Reloading when you're not aiming happens in super-slow motion. Reloading while aiming works fine.

2. When I accidentally pressed F twice to interact with a switch, the Development Console reported a NullReferenceException.

3. Before you submit, can you assign number keys to the weapons? (1=pistol, 2=shotgun, etc.) It wouldn't be hard to script, but it's such a standard feature that it really should come as a default.

4. The reticle for aiming at enemies works great! Can you also change the reticle when targeting an interactable?

Great work!

 

Hey Opsive, the new demo is muuuuuch better thank you. I can shoot!! What was the issue with the fire button?

In addition to Tony's post, here are some last issues I see, mostly related to shooting:

1) The weapons are still aimed SLIGHTLY above the crosshair. Either the arms can be lowered slightly or the crosshair raised slightly.

2) When aiming and walking backward, the weapons point down at the ground yet bullets fly straight at the crosshair. The weapon should aim at the crosshair even when walking backward.

3) The shotgun needs a pump animation after firing (if there is a shell remaining) and after reloading.

4) When popping out of cover to shoot, sometimes a "jump landing" animation will be played, even though the player didn't jump.

5) The character should put a little more "back into it" when swinging the knife. Nobody swings a knife or throws a punch without a slight folding/twisting at the waist, except maybe robots.

6) The grenade animation is better but it is still looking pretty weak/girly and robotic. I think maybe an underhand toss might be better for that short distance (think swat tossing flashbang into a room) rather than trying to fit an overhand baseball-looking throw.

7) Sometimes footsteps don't sound when strafing, and footsteps don't sound when sprinting.

Overall this asset is coming together nicely. The movement speed is great, the running animation not so pansy anymore, most importantly, it's fun to run around and explore and shoot things!

 

8) Also, is there an option to put in a separate "sprint" animation or does it just play the "run" animation faster. Thanks