Third Person Controller - Third Person, AI, Multiplayer, Mobile Framework

Oh, I see. I hadn't changed the namespace. That's fixed, works now.

Also, a couple of things I've noticed while fiddling around with the new character while trying to write and test abilities:

- Said new character snags on pretty much anything with a collider in midair if moving against another object. I'm talking stuff like basic Unity cubes and objects from the TPS warehouse scene.
- I'm having trouble modifying the player's velocity using an active ability. Changing the rigidbody velocity directly doesn't work (which is a problem because I want to temporarily halt the y velocity with one ability), and using AddForce and AddRelativeForce both have their own issues when it comes to moving properly, with the latter only working properly with combat movement. The base Ability script doesn't seem to give you any meaningful ways of actually modifying character velocities.

 

I fixed this in the Character Builder about a week ago - the Character Builder assigned the wrong ground/air friction materials. Go to your RigidbodyCharacterController and swap the materials so the Grounded Friction Material has MaxFriction and Air Friction has Frictionless.

If you want to update the velocity directly you should change the m_Controller.Velocity variable instead of the velocity on the Rigidbody. The RigidbodyCharacterController updates the Rigidbody velocity after all of the ability callbacks have ended so whatever changes you make to that velocity get overwritten.

 

Well, switching the physics materials now causes the player to snag on stuff on the ground instead, but that's not really quite such a big deal. Still an issue, though. If I recall, the standard assets only uses max friction when the character is standing still, and uses no friction for movement in general.

And as for the velocities... Ah. Okay, that does it, thanks, wasn't aware of that. Now I just need to figure out how to get the velocity to work in both movement modes, though I could just hack it for now and force it into combat mode.

 

Here's a short video of the ladder climb ability coming to the adventure scene:

The ability is generic enough that I plan on using the same code for both the vine climb and pipe climb.

I'll take a look at the Standard Assets to see what Unity does. The MovemetType affects the rotation more then the velocities. In fact, I only check the MovementType in the UpdateRotation and CheckMovement methods of the RigidbodyCharacterController.

 

Well, the main problem is getting velocity right with the adventure movement, due to the way the rotations work. Combat mode is easy to do, Adventure, not so much, as I'm not really sure how to let the ability know which way to move relative to the camera direction.

 

What ability are you working on adding? Take a look at the switch statement within RigidbodyCharacterController.CheckMovement - it will convert the input direction into a relative direction depending on the movement type.

 

I'm actually implementing a dash-boost ability that doesn't use root motion. So I have to implement the velocity manually.

Thankfully, though, it should be a lot easier to implement parkour mechanics, since I won't need to fiddle with that sort of thing, mainly because I'm going to be locking the player's rotation.

 

Wohoo ladders Can you select if just hitting the ladder or using a key to start climbing ? Will work with shooter mode too I guess, and last to ask, can we choose if character starts climbing from above depending on facing it or not ? Like move backwards to ladder = climb / run forward to ladder = don't use it. Or some variable depending on speed or so.
Thank you.

 

Yes, this functionality is added from the base ability class so you can choose to assign a button input or not:

Yes!

Currently we only have an animation when the character is mounting facing the ladder (from the top or bottom). It wouldn't be too hard to add an animation when the character is facing away from the ladder but right now we just want to get the adventure scene out so that will come at a later time. In terms of the speed variable, that isn't built in but it would only require a small code change within Climb.CanStartAbility.

 

Can you add the ability for ragdolls to activate when hit or shot? That would be awesome! I know they turn on when the character die but if they could turn and off /on and react to hits that would be so cool!

 

Just bought this asset and imported it into a new, empty project, and am liking it so far. I followed your vids on setting up the character controller, items etc, and the character moves around fine, until I create a new item type, (a rifle), and assign it to the character; then I get this error:
Animator.GotoState: State could not be found
UnityEngine.Animator:CrossFade(Int32, Single, Int32, Single)
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.AnimatorMonitor:CrossFade(Int32, Single, Int32, Single, Single)
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.AnimatorMonitor:ChangeAnimatorStates(Ability, Int32, String, Single, Single, Single)
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.AnimatorMonitoretermineUpperBodyState(Boolean, Boolean)
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.AnimatorMonitoretermineStates(Boolean)
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.AnimatorMonitoretermineStates()
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.RigidbodyCharacterController:set_Moving(Boolean)
Opsive.ThirdPersonController.RigidbodyCharacterController:UpdateAnimator()

The toon still moves around ok, but I can't aim or shoot at all.
I'm using Unity 4.6 Pro, and like I said, all is well until I assign the weapon to the toon. Maybe I'm missing something?

I get warnings about putting a pool and a scheduler into the scene (not mentioned in the docs, or not where I could find em), so I created empty go's and added the appropriate script?

There is no mention of getting the camera to work in your docs, I know I'm stating the obvious, but letting people know what scripts to put on the main camera seems like a good idea, as well as stating that they can actually use the default main camera in the scene.
Thanks for your time.

Edit: I'm looking at your behaviour designer asset for my ai, and having bought a few useless ones already, I'm a bit wary before I buy, so another question: every ai asset on the store currently shows their examples on nice flat floors, yours included. I will be putting the ai on a terrain, with trees, rocks and hills etc, just like the real world. Will your behaviour designer still work properly in this environment, as it seems no one else's does, and we don't all build scenes with huge flat expanses. Thanks again.

Edit 2: Sorry for this growing list, but I really want to use this asset, and it keeps throwing curve balls at me I just imported the asset into Unity 5.1.0f3, and I had the same leg shuffling problem mentioned earlier in this post a few pages back (that I didn't have in Unity 4.6), so the update obviously did not fix it. I followed the link in your reply to the problem, and put the missing idle animation into the controller. Now the shuffling legs are fixed, but it is a very jerky transition from running to idle, and from idle to running. I haven't had the guts to try making a weapon item yet lol.
Cheers.

P.S. Tried making a weapon item again, and got exactly the same error and end result as I did earlier in 4.6 as soon as I assigned it to my toon.

 

I do agree that it would add that extra layer of realism. I have actually had it on my list though there are some other more-core features first

@wheelbarrow -

Thanks for your purchase and sorry you're hitting so many issues up front. We'll get it sorted out

Does your new ItemType's name match the name of the substate on the upper body layer?





You'll also need to make sure the substate has all of the states that the other item substates. I really wish that I could display a more friendly error message then that pointing you to exactly what state is missing, but I haven't figured out a way within the Animator API to first check if a state exist before transitioning to it.

That's correct. Also add a DecalManager and LayerManager to that same GameObject.

Sure, I can add that. Right now you need to add the CameraHandler and CameraController component. In the next version you'll also need to add a CameraMonitor component (this component basically takes some of the functionality of the CameraController component so you can use your own camera controller script).

Thanks for taking a look at Behavior Designer as well. As a small distinction, Behavior Designer doesn't know or care what type of surface you're using - it is just a behavior tree implementation and the tasks determine its functionality. With that said, the Movement Pack is a set of tasks and it does care what type of surface you are using. Which pathfinding implementation are you going to use? As long as the pathfinding implementation can work with terrains then the Movement Pack can work with terrains. Unity's NavMesh, Apex Path, and A* Pathfinding Project all work with terrains so you should be good to go.

Glad you found that Idle state addition. Something happens between my Asset Store package and the package that you download off of the Asset Store which makes it lose its reference. I just recreated that state so hopefully it'll remember the reference now. In terms of the jerking transition, is the only thing that is different the version of Unity that you used? Could it be related to this?

Edit: To add to this, when we get out of beta (with the next version) I will be going through and created a lot of new videos and adding new text documentation sections. The videos are a bit dated now (it's easier to do things) and I think that the docs could benefit from a "How To" section. In a way its good to see the areas that people are struggling with so I can make sure to add documentation related to that or create a video.

 

Thanks for your quick response! No, I had no idea I had to have the same name for my weapon as the substate on the upper body - that would obviously be the culprit. No mention of this is made in your instructional video about creating an item, so I'm not surprised I missed it, but now I know how to fix it

As for pathfinding, I have Apex path, or I'll use Unity's navmesh, one or the other.

And finally, no, I don't think it's related to the issue in your link. When the toon goes from idle to run, his right shoulder jerks backwards as the running animation begins, but the running itself is fine. Then when he goes from running to idle, as the idle animation begins the same shoulder jerks forward into the idle state, which also then runs fine. All the jerkiness seems to be on his right shoulder for some reason, and only when transitioning.
Thanks again for your rapid reply, I appreciate it.
Cheers.

 

I'm glad that was it. The Item Type Builder does mention it but you're right in that it is easy to miss and it didn't exist when the video was created. I don't plan on changing this again so you should be good to go.

Was the Unity 4.6 version working? Have you tried adjusting the dampening time or Moving State transition duration on the Animator Monitor? If none of this fixes it then I can take a quick look if you want to send me a PM with your character prefab.

 

The same toon worked fine in 4.6, it only happened when I tried it in Unity 5. I will play with those settings and let you know how it goes.
I have another question if you don't mind: I have another model I would also like to use with your asset, but it has some weird bone-naming conventions and I can't seem to get it set up in the asset because of this. Is there a way I can manually set the model up for your controller? When I use the character builder, he stays in the T-pose and does nothing. Cheers.

 

Is that model a humanoid? As long as all of the bones are specified in the Avatar Configuration inspector it shouldn't matter how the bones are named.

 

Successfully added Control Freak mobile controls to TPC:

 

@DeanMarquette -

It's great to see that you were able to add Control Freak integration without too much trouble. I'll try to add Control Freak and Rewired support in version 1.1.

 

We've finished adding the adventure scene abilities! This adventure scene has the potential to include a huge number of abilities so we will be splitting it up into two phases. The abilities below will be included in the first phase. The second phase will contain other abilities such as hanging and swimming.

Push


Pull


Crawl


Ledge Strafe
​

(continuing on next post due to screenshot limit)

 

Ladder Climb (video)


Vine Climb


Pipe Climb
​

 

WOW! That looks excellent. I’m thinking island survival/adventure… with zombies lol!

So for mobile will like the action icon pop up when you get to the ladder and you just tap the screen and climb up or down or what?

 

So what about the bow shooting and all the other animations. Does this mean again it will take longer? Hope for having it here soon because i really like what i see.

 

Hah - we've been asked about zombies a couple of times now so eventually I guess we'll have to include a scene which has zombies.

You can either have the ability start automatically when it gets within range or you can map it to a button. On mobile you can then add a virtual button and use it for any of the abilities. This aspect hasn't changed from the version that is released right now - I think that it works really well.

...
*checks calendar*
...
How does this month sound?

Sarah has all of the items modeled/textured and now we just have to get it in. The animations on these aren't nearly as complex as the ability animations so it won't take as long as these abilities did. In addition, with the abilities we had to write a completely new script whereas with these weapons we will just be extending the existing item scripts.

 

created character with the latest TPC 0.9 on Unity 5.1.1 with ragdoll attached
Then added following script in root of that character:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2. using System.Collections;
3. using Opsive.ThirdPersonController;
4.  
5. public class DeathDelay : MonoBehaviour
6. {
7.      private Health health;
8.  
9.      void Awake()
10.      {
11.          health = GetComponent<Health>();
12.      }
13.  
14.      void Start()
15.      {
16.          Invoke("callEvent", 3);
17.      }
18.  
19.  
20.      void callEvent()
21.      {
22.          health.Damage(amount: 200, position: new Vector3(0, 200, -400), force: new Vector3(0, 0, 0));
23.      }
24. }

The strange that in health.Damage the position arg behave like force
(character throw away) and force ignore all values I passed.

For instance,
health.Damage(amount: 200, position: new Vector3(0, 0, 0), force: new
Vector3(0, 200, -400));
Character died in place where he stay.

What I miss?

 

@den3d -

It's a little misleading but Health.Damage doesn't apply any forces to the main Rigidbody. If the character dies it will apply forces to the child Rigidbody components but the effect doesn't work so well if the main Rigidbody doesn't receive any forces. Here's what ShootableWeapon looks like:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.   Health hitHealth;
3.   if ((hitHealth = m_RaycastHit.transform.GetComponentInParent<Health>()) != null) {
4.     hitHealth.Damage(m_HitscanDamageAmount, m_RaycastHit.point, m_RaycastHit.normal * -m_HitscanImpactForce);
5.   }
6.  
7.   // Apply a force to the hit rigidbody if the impact force is greater than 0.
8.   if (m_HitscanImpactForce > 0 && m_RaycastHit.rigidbody != null && !m_RaycastHit.rigidbody.isKinematic) {
9.     m_RaycastHit.rigidbody.AddForceAtPosition(m_RaycastHit.normal * -m_HitscanImpactForce, m_RaycastHit.point);
10.   }
11.  

So it applies it's own force instead of relying on Health.Damage to do it. The reason that it is setup like this is because I don't always use AddForceAtPosition. Sometimes AddExplosiveForce is used so at the time my mindset was to just separate it out.

 

OK, I see, but:
1) When I set m_HitscanImpactForce == 400 then shoot the character got hit reaction but when die nothing happen he just fall at place where he stay.
2) My character die while running (not tested on jumping/walking etc.). The body immediately stop moving then just fall down with no inertia at all. I think need apply velocity * mass impulse to the rigid body CM when character die.

Could you please comment on these two point.
Is this TPC beta problem or I should care these points by myself?

 

@den3d - both of those look related to not adding a force to the main Rigidbody. In addition to calling the Damage method, also call the AddForceAtPosition method similar to my last post. This should then get it working properly. Not all hit objects have a Health component, and explosive forces use different parameters then non-explosive forces, so that's why the two calls are separated.

 

I'm assuming CanStartAbility() doesn't actually trigger an ability automatically, but the Fall ability's implementation implies otherwise. I'm asking because I'm using raycasts in that specific method to check whether to start an ability that starts automatically, and it doesn't seem to be working like it should. Really, the methods in abilities and how they're used is somewhat vague in some respects.

 

Ability.CanStartAbility gets called by the RigidbodyCharacterController to determine if a particular ability can be started. This happens every time RigidbodyCharacterController.Move is called which is every FixedUpdate. If there is no button mapped to the ability, as in the case of the Fall ability, then that ability will automatically be started and Ability.StartAbility will be called.

Keep in mind that the abilities have a priority system - the higher the ability is in the list the higher priority that it has. If a higher priority ability has started then a lower priority ability cannot be started (except when Ability.IsConcurrentAblity is true). I'm all ears for renaming/making it easier to implement the ability methods. For the most part the names match the methods called with RigidbodyCharacterController.Move so if you have a high level understanding of that method then it should be easy to pick up.

 

Okay, that makes sense (plus it turns out that the rays weren't updating properly, said rays are basically variables to make it easier to identify raycasts). I'm having more trouble trying to get the ability to stop, now, though, and the controller rotation isn't aligning to a raycast normal. For context, I'm trying to write a wall-run ability that triggers automatically when against a wall and falling.

You know what? I'll think I'll just send the script to you so you can just look at it and tell me what I'm doing wrong so we don't have to go on a back-and-forth about my coding incompetence XD

 

Quick question - what's the minimum Unity version for Third Person Controller? I imported it into a new Unity 5.0.3 project and got a Reflection error in an editor script. (I'm not in front of Unity right now, otherwise I'd post the actual error.) It's fine in Unity 5.1.0.

 

4.6, so 5.0 should work. I just imported it in a 5.0.0f4 project and also got a reflection error. The stack trace doesn't point to anything within the Third Person Controller though. I'm downloading 5.0.4 now to see if it has been fixed.

Edit: it looks like it is having a problem importing the runtime dll. If you import the source code then 5.0.0f4 stops throwing that reflection error.

 

Will do! Do you perhaps need to provide a DLL compiled in Unity 5?

(Thanks as always for your amazingly fast responses.)

 

That's the thing, the DLL was built for 5.0. I submitted three different versions to the Asset Store: 4.6, 5.0, and 5.1. I have the project used to submit the 5.0 package and it doesn't throw that reflection error. We are getting close to releasing the adventure scene so when I submit that version I'll round trip it to make sure it works both ways with 5.0.

 

Demo looks really cool. I've been trying to implement Third Person Controller with Control Freak but have been having some issues with it. What was required in order to get them to play nice together?

 

Hopefully @DeanMarquette will be able to give some advice but I just wanted to say that Control Freak (and Rewired) integration will be added in version 1.1. The adventure scene will put us at version 1.0 and then I plan on improving the items, mobile input, and input integrations for 1.1.

 

Hi, this was extremely simple really… well after I got help from both Opsive & CF. They were nice enough to convert the scripts for me. I’ll post the 2 scripts when I get home tonight as long as there isn’t any objection from Opsive.

Some advice if you are solely a mobile developer like me. If you are also using Behavior Designer It’s a good Idea to setup the TPC & BD sample scene, save as your own scene (rename), switch the platform to a mobile one, and setup the mobile controls with CF. Then save the project and zip it. Now you’ll have everything you need ready to go for future projects.

 

Awesome. If you want to send me those two files I can then put it on the Integrations page. This will make it easy for everybody to find.

 

You must replace the two TPC mobile scripts with these scripts. Copy them to the same directory as the other TPC mobile scripts and delete the old ones.

Add the CF-FPP prefab into the game and it will work perfectly! You just have to do some simple button renaming in the Touch Zones rollout in the CF-FPP inspector. Like Button name Fire2 is actually the zoom in instead of ZOOM, but these are simple enough to work out. You can find most of the correct names in the Mobile Controls roll out that appears when you switch to mobile platforms.

Also make sure you add the EventSystem to your scene. This has the TouchInputModule scripts in it. I just created a prefab of it from the mobile scene and then dragged it into the TPC and BD sample scene.

Just a quick note, I found that when running in Unity the buttons are extremely small, but if you make them any bigger they become HUGE after a build so it is best to keep the button Diameter at 1. I made them bigger just for the demo.

Hint: if you like my layout the action button is in position X:0, Y:0 Jump is X:1, Y:-1 and AIM (zoom) is X:1, Y:1. However, I find aim unusable while shooting in this position. It would work perfect on the other side of the screen if you want to zoom in and shoot at the same time.

SCRIPTS:
Removed per request of developer - Will be uploaded on the integrations page

P.S. If you find this helpful, I'd appreciate any help from anyone with adding a quit button. I was unable to get this to work. Or an application.loadlevel button so it will send them to the main menu.

 

Thanks Dean for sharing this! I've added it to the integrations page.

You're targeting Android/iOS, right? You can use Application.Quit but you aren't supposed to do this on mobile platforms as the user can just quit with the hardware button. With Application.LoadLevel, could you do something like:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. if (PlayerInput.GetButtonDown("LoadLevel")) {
3.    Application.LoadLevel("MyLevel");
4. }
5.  

This will then call Control Freak's CFInput.GetButtonDown.

 

Thanks guys!

 

Assuming everything goes well we should be able to release the adventure scene next week! Sarah posted previews of the adventure items here and here, but we now have all of the items in and animated. Here's a screenshot of each item:

Axe


Dagger


Katana
​

 

Bow


Crossbow


Slingshot
​

 

Those animations may need some lower body poses for the leg positioning to make them look really fluid.

 

Good suggestion - shortly after I made that post we actually talked about doing just that

 

Everything is looking so good, I bet it will feel really good to finally release all this amazing work!

 

I appreciate it! Yeah we've been talking about this scene for what seems like forever. I'm not sure what we're going to do after we release it. I'll try to put up a web demo of it before we release just to let everybody try it out and point out any issues before we submit.

Sarah added in the lower body animations for the aim and use states. Lets try this post again

Axe


Dagger


Katana
​

 

Bow


Crossbow


Slingshot
​

 

Looking amazing looking forward to the release of the adventure scene.The weapons and repositioning of the legs look good more lifelike

 

Looking good, though her face is still bothering the hell out of me, but I guess it's a minor visual issue.