Walking down

Good morning from the bus on my way to the day job. Last week, I wrote that I was starting my RPG project over and would make sure to get the basics right from the get go and then expand.  So yesterday evening I had to scratch the majority of the movement mechanics because I wanted to add something. 

We had a player objects with a Rigidbody component in Unity and that object gets the order to move around, which does work. Except when it does not. You see, there is this thing called gravity that pushes objects down. We know that and your historian-programmer probable isn't the one to explain that. Let me just ignore the actual physics and tell what happens to the player. 

We're standing on top of a ramp or hill and that red ball at the bottom sure looks alluring, so let's go there. You take the first step forward and gravity pulls you down. Then the next.

This sounds alright, but it is not. This makes for a series of bounces, because, contrary to actual humans, the player does not really step up or down. He walks forward and gravity does the rest.

Now I am not a anatomy expert either (blogging is a humbling experience) but I figure I need to have somthing resembling stepping down and blocking and controlling gravity or something to support gravity so the player does not walk ahead and fall, but actually experiences the down force while walking.  I know from walking downstairs this morning that we use our legs to catch the gravity, but I'm picking option B.

Long story short, because it was a hours job causing all kind of weird problems.  I now have a CharacterController component replacing the Rigidbody and that one shoots down rays to find out how they reflect on the floor. If they go up, no problem.  If they go backwards, we're walking uphill and that goes fine anyway. If we're going down, there is an additional force down pushing the player to the floor. Quite pleased about it.

Now I kind of have the movement finished. I do need to have something to make sure that a player does not get stuck when standing up from a crouching position in a confined space. Today however, I'm going to the football game anf and I'll be home late. Maybe tomorrow.

For this week, I hope to be able to have the crosshair react to distance to an object and have the GUI mention the object.  Hence the red ball. Furthermore I want to enhance the scene management to work from the door itself and make sure the player does not look at the door after entering. Should be possible.