A Newbie Trying to Understand a Rigidbody vs a character Controller

Unity Engine
1

I am still newish to the whole process, and have been doing a lot of research, I mean A LOT, and have learned so much in a short amount of time. Between 4 books, 2 pdf files, the Unity documentation, and the web, I have all of the information I could ever need.

My problem at the moment is that I am creating a Super smash bros like pokemon battle setup, something I have always wanted to see, and trying to set up controls. I have the models, most of the animations are done(only have a few to finish) but I can not figure out the whole rigidbody control setup.

I wanted to go with the character controller because the movements of my characters(Pikachu and Bulbasaur) are not realistic, and the controls setup is way easier XD. but this poses the future problem of not being able to handle collisions the way I want(I think. Based on a lot of reading and some very tired eyes).

So anyways the question is if i have the ability to switch between pokemon and need custom collision boxes for each pokemon, I have to use the rigid body and make my controller script from scratch with (the very much complicated) translations, or is there a way to do what I want with a character controller?

I am tired, confused, and sadly out of coffee. Please help.

Sareh Shadowborne

2

A charactercontroller is just a shortcut to some common problems. Input, stair steps and a rigidbody. If you want to change anything, you have to do it by yourself, but translations for a simple character are not hard if you use kinematic rigidbodies (no physics). If you want to have physical movements, you have to add a force to the rigidbody instead of changing the position of the transform.

public void Update(){
transform.position+=transform.forward*Time.deltaTime; //move forward 1 meter per second
transform.position+=transform.right*Time.deltaTime*2f; //move right without turning 2 meters per second
}

The “hardest” part of a charactercontroller is possibly the handling of stair steps. You need a raycast for that to check where you are going, but for simpler things a capsule collider may be enough to slide up stairs.

3

For the most part right now, I am not doing any steps, I am trying to capture the Anime fighting style of pokemon in a gym like battle, combined with the aspects of pokemon we are so used to playing. Right now I am focusing on the battling simply because it is the entire reason I want to do this.

Basically you take control of the pokemon you send out and can actually move around the field. now my issue is when i get into setting up attacks and collisions from those kinds of things. Also the collision capsule from the character controller just simply wont work for many of the pokemon, hence my apparent need for a kinematic rigidbody. But the task of trying to program such dynamic movement controls seems so daunting, I don’t want someone to do it for me, let me be clear, I am looking for opinions and possibilities so I can make a more informed decision as to which one will be better suited for my specific needs.

Thank you for your opinion :slight_smile: