Custom Character Movement Tech Demo
I wanted to create my own custom character movement within Unreal Engine 5 using C++ exclusively without any blueprints. The system I ended creating was based around the idea of Wall Running and Wall Jumping in a platformer. I then built out mechanics that made sense to incorporate for a faster pace of movement, and a more open-ended experience to how a player would move through the environment. This included adding a dash that allows players to change their direction, a double jump to increase the heights players could reach, and a ground pound to allow players to stop their side-to-side momentum.
Wall Running and Wall Jumping
Going into this project the major mechanics that I knew I wanted to make was my own variation of Wall Jumping and Wall Running. These are mechanics that are very fun to play with in the games that they are present in, and I wanted to recreate that effect.
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For both of them, I started by creating a line trace around the player that shows if the player is hitting a wall or not. That way I can see if running along or jumping off the wall is possible.
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The running was an interesting task to take care of, as I wanted the player to almost latch onto the wall when they hit it rather than sliding off. To accomplish this, whenever the player is on a wall their gravity is set to 0, their Z velocity is set to 0, and I give them friction while in the air, as that allowed for the best feel of being able to run across the wall.
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For jumping off the wall, whenever the player is on the wall I get the normalized vector from the wall they're hitting. That way I see the direction away from the wall. Then, inside of my jump function, I see whether or not the normalized vector is positive or negative, and then accordingly apply a force along with a jump in order to have the player jump away from the wall in the correct direction.
Dashing
When it comes to movement I always love having a character that can dash or roll, or have some sort of quick little movement to them. Dashes are also very complicated, as there's many ways to implement them as well as many ways for them to be implemented poorly.
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The initial design was to add velocity to specific axis, but that ended up throwing off the player's momentum. After that I decided to use the player's current momentum, but that results in not being able to dash in a specific direction related to input (which felt especially bad in the sense of a platformer).
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I eventually settled on the use of finding the player's current input command, stopping their current side-to-side velocity, and then applying the dash in the direction of their input. This gives the player the ability to dash in whatever direction they like, and to also be able to dash in the opposite direction of how they are traveling in the air.
Jumping
As is needed for a project like this, I had to implement the ability to jump for the player. Of course I needed to make it so that the player could only jump while on the ground, but in addition I wanted to add a double jump to give the player more to traverse the level.
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I started by creating a line trace that would start at the center of the player, and extend slightly below their feet, that would see if they are hitting the ground or not. If they are, then they have the ability to jump.
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If the player is not on the ground, but has their double jump "charge" then they can jump once while in the air.
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The hardest part was implementing the line trace to make sure the player was on the ground, as it needed precisely the right height to hit the ground and not allow the player to jump too much.
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Then we handle the ability to jump in one large PerformJump() function, that determined whether we are doing a normal jump, a double jump, or a wall jump, and correct applies the forces needed and applies the correct boolean switches.
Ground Pound
A smaller piece of movement that I enjoy having in a platformer is the ability to ground pound. While it can be used for damage as well as a way to help with puzzles, I enjoy having the ability to cancel out my side-to-side movement and bring myself back down to the ground fast and in a straight line to help with movement control.
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This was a simple thing to implement, but still necessary. Allowing the player to get down to the ground much faster.
Conclusion
Creating this system fully in C++ and Unreal Engine 5 was a task that took some getting used to due to my extensive background in C# and Unity. However after several "Aha!" moments, I was able to more fully understand how to program within C++ and how to work better within in the Unreal Engine 5 systems.
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I enjoy working on Character Movement most of all as a gameplay programmer, as it's the system that I believe to be the most vital, and programming it into a 3D environment had its fair share of development pitfalls.
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However I believe my knowledge of C++ and Unreal have deepened due to this project.
Interesting Bug
While iterating on the player's latching onto the wall for the wall running and jumping, I came across a funny bug when I first experimented with getting rid of the gravity from the player.
