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Additions to PickUp objects

edited November 2014 in Engine development
Hi,

yesterday, while waiting for 1.40 I was toying with this small asset called Rigidbody Pick-up: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/13714 and I couldn't help but think that it has a couple of minor extra features that would enrich Adventure Creator too if added (not the support for the asset, the features).

Here's a screen coming from the Asset Store page:
image

Most of this stuff is already in AC - AC's Rotation is actually better as this asset forces you to use a MouseLook script. Also, this asset uses a "Pickup button" which, while nice, forces you to set up another input manager with "mouse 0" if you want to use the Mouse click, which is by far the most obvious option.

Here's what I found interesting, though:
- the possibility to active the "Toggle Pickup" button, which means you don't need to hold the mouse to hold the object (from what I've heard Chris is already planning to introduce this in 1.40)
- the "distance" parameter. I'm not exactly sure how this works as I noticed that for example the "distance" number is resetted if it surpasses the "max distance held" - and the latter I wasn't able to understand its purpose. edit: maxdistance is to make sure the item is 'let go' if it gets blocked somewhere and you go too far. smart.

Anyway, while AC already covers the "max distance from where you can grab an object"  through Moveable ray length, there is currently no way to set "how far from the player the object can be": the object position is going to be dependent on your Moveable ray length itself.

In Rigidbody Pick-up instead, if you set a small distance for example, the object literally moves in front of the player even if the max distance grab allows you to grab it from far, for example. It's certainly not realistic, but it could be useful if you want to let your players stuff grab from afar but make sure they're not far from you which could results in problems with other colliders around.
Even with this asset though I wasn't able to not have objects happily go through walls while walking, but I feel this is a complex issue that must be solved in another way.

Another thing to note is that currently in AC you can limit how far your object is going to be already, if you allow your player to Zoom and de-zoom it. This, though, means that unless you set the max de-zoom distance to be equal (or at least as far as) to your Moveable ray length, your player won't be able to have it go back to the original distance of the time you picked it up.

The are also a couple of options in the Physics menu (as per screen) and the "Freeze" options which lets you literally "place" an object anywhere in the air if you wish so. Not that interesting for me, but maybe for someone else.
Last, it seemed to work a bit better with the overall physics:


Comments

  • edited November 2014
    sorry, just a little addition: another thing that Rigidbody Pickup does really well is that it prevents objects going through the floor. 
    This is really important. No matter how hard I tried and no matter if I even took out the "toggle pick up" (so that I could try to "force" the item down the floor by holding it and moving the mouse) it always stayed a tiny little bit above it, so that it doesn't really touches it. I don't know how he did it but it's great.
    Currently, with AC (1.39c), when you hold an object (I tried with the tutorial Rock, just to be clear) you can "force it" down and it easily breaks colliders. Once I even managed to send it past the terrain XD
  • Certainly some food for thought, thanks.
  • Sorry, just another little thing i noticed: the reason as to why I never got to "hit" the floor was the "Object turns only Y" option, now I understand what it means. It's very useful
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