Introduction to OpenKCC

The Open Kinematic Character Controller (OpenKCC) is an open source Kinematic Character Controller (KCC) that allows for a player moving as a kinematic object through a scene. This is done through using unity's physics engine and projection based movement.

See Example Usage for how to use the character controller in a unity project.

Why Kinematic?

In the real world, every object has mass and interacts with objects around it. However, these kinds of "real" interactions can feel unnatural in a virtual environment. A kinematic object can push objects around it but not be pushed itself. This is useful for a character as it allows for moving around the virtual space with a high degree of control instead of just bouncing randomly off anything it collides with.

See the KCC Design Overview for more details on how KCC moves around and different kinds of physics objects.

Design Notes

For information detailing how the project works and the design of the project, see the KCC Design Overview for a review of how the kinematic character controller works and detailed design descriptions.

Learning

As these videos are created they will be listed here:

• Designing Character Controllers Intro
• Physics Behind Games and Character Interactions
• Projection Based Movement of KCC
• How the KCC Manages Jumping
• Camera controller and Dither Shader
• [Planned] Character Controller Case Study and Requirements Engineering

In the future, I will write up more wiki articles on how to use the KCC in your own project, how to modify the OpenKCC to add custom features, and on more in depth summaries on how the OpenKCC works as described in the videos above.

Project Organization

The project is organized into a few different folders, here are some of the important folders for using and learning about the project:

• Assets\Samples - OpenKCC Sample scenes and examples for the project.
• Packages\com.nickmaltbie.openkcc - main package folder with all the code, tests, and shared assets.
  • Packages\com.nickmaltbie.openkcc\common - Common prefabs, materials, and assets used across the entire project.
  • Packages\com.nickmaltbie.openkcc\Editor - Editor specific assets for the project configuration, not included in builds.
  • Packages\com.nickmaltbie.openkcc\FSM - State Machine code for the project.
  • Packages\com.nickmaltbie.openkcc\OpenKCC - Main project source code and assemblies.
  • Packages\com.nickmaltbie.openkcc\Tests - EditMode and PlayMode tests for the project.

The rest of the assets folder contains code for render pipeline and settings, feel free to look through them if you want an example configuration.

Testing

To see a summary of the tests included in the project and how to run them, see the Test Design document.