Moving Characters in Games – Kinematic Character Controller in Unity

Investigating how players move in games with Unity.

How a player moves through a virtual space is not always clear and straightforward. Defining physics objects to interact with each other in a clean and expected manner is important to creating any game. In this video, I describe how to move a kinematic character controller through a 3D space using unity and provide visualizations and examples. The project that this kinematic character controller is a part of is open source and can be found at the GitHub project link in this description. I will be continue making new videos in this series going over more details on how the character controller camera work in Unity.

Chapters:
Intro 0:00
Character Motion Types 0:19
Camera Movement 1:10
Basic Player Movement 1:43
Collision Detection 2:29
Bouncing and Sliding 3:30
Gravity is Always Getting Me Down 4:35
Sticking to the Floor 5:10
Putting It All Together 5:50
Designing and Debugging 6:22
Outro 6:56

Games in the order they Appear
* Celeste
* Overwatch
* Rock of Ages II
* Quake

#gamedev #unity3d #madewithunity

[SimonTysland]

Dude, you deserve more views. Well presented and good explanation of a topic that is actually hard to wrap your head around!

[foldupgames]

My head hurts just watching the summary!!!! Glad people like you understand and engage with it.

[jahoopyjaheepu]

This is probably the best explanation video of this topic on Youtube. I've actually been creating pretty much the same thing on-and-off since last summer, and have learned so much from doing it. Making your own character controller is one of the most powerful things you can do for your future game development.

[jadonmullinex]

This is amazing. I'm learning a ton by going through your very well-written, well-commented code. This controller fixes a lot of problems I've seen with other controllers. I can't find anything like it. I really appreciate this!

[syngleton]

This is exactly the kind of topic I’ve been looking for. Thank you so much for making such a concise explanation. I’ve been trying to make my own CharacterController with the limited knowledge I have and this could help immensely.

[felipinhosinoti]

Wow, this video its very good. I wasn't prepared for the knowledge I received

[takeowatanabe]

Every game dev should watch this video, amazing explanation and demo project.

[deadgamer]

Hey Nick<

I came across KCCs in Nvidia's documentation and your series was the best one I've come across to help me understand them even better. Honestly, I'm struggling with understanding wall collision. I keep clipping through the walls. I'd love some help here. Again absolutely lovely series and I love what you're doing

[blinkachu]

Could you potentially go more in-depth on collision itself, as in, how one would code that? I don't really learn much from just copying code or reading a finished script, for me it specifically is something I can understand if it's in a format like this video.

[matheusreidopedaco]

Hi. Could you explain the reason for the bounces? In the simplified KCC, why do we need to limit the iterations of the while loop? In fact, why the loop at all? Thanks in advance!

[chadgtr]

if it is a first person shooter game, can this character be shot on the arm and the body will stand still, fall to the back ? will this bullet be counted in collision detection ?

[richardtoth]

when your character moves forward, is she simply "Teleported" forward? So you just set her location to a new location after doing a capsule trace?

[daytonode]

This github repo is the most unreadable thing I've ever seen dear god