BGP 2015 – fifth week: Trouble with player movement.

Hello!

This week I’ve mainly been working on the player movement. I tried making it more controllable by the player. This was done by changing the direction of the rigidbody’s velocity to a forward vector multiplied by the magnitude of the old velocity. However this meant that the parts of the velocity that made up movement other than acceleration, such as jumping or strafing, also became a forward vector. As such jumping, strafing, tackling and gravity was ruined, but the player did get better steering control over their vehicle. By drawing mind maps of the movement function and analyzing it, I tried to get the redirection of gravity apply to acceleration only while the other velocities, such as jumping and  strafing, were unaffected.

In the end, however, it turned out that using the old movement (without the redirected acceleration) with a largely increased drag on the rigidbody, from 0.5 to 2, worked better as it also gave the players control without affecting the gravity, jumping etc…

The big question now is which form of translation the movement should be made up of, by adding forces or affecting the rigidbody’s velocity directly? Add force might be the better alternative as using that means I will interfere less with Unity3D’s own physics engine, but I need a proper level to test the movement on now.

Cheers!