The following is an overview of the SoulsPlayer prefab in the AdventureSouls demo.

SoulsPlayer

The main transform contains the following components.

  • SoulsPlayerCharacter
  • ManualPersister used to save any state related to the player
  • CharacterControllerMovement and the CharacterController it uses
  • MovementSaver automatically saves the movement data
  • Rigidbody and CapsuleCollider which are used by
    • GenericTriggerItem with Key PLY which triggers GenericTriggerAreas in the environment(for example the traps in the dungeon)
    • CharacterActionArea which is used by the character to detect and start actions in the environment(doors, chests, …)

Pivot

This transform gets rotated by the movement to face the direction the player is moving.

Body

Contains the TriggerDamageReceiver that receives damage. It also has a second CapsuleCollider with IsTrigger unchecked which pushes around decorators like smashed crates. The components of the Body GameObject were originally located on the Model but have been moved into a separate GameObject to make model replacement easier.

For the sake of simplicity and performance the collision model for the player only consists of a simple capsule. If a more detailed model is required do the following:

  • Move TriggerDamageReceiver and Rigidbody to your Model they use any collider in the players model
  • Delete the Body GameObject
  • Change the Layer of Model to PlayerBody
  • Create detailed colliders in the Armature of the model, skip if your model already comes with colliders

Model

This is where the visuals of the player are located. It contains the Animator along with an AnimatorProxy that passes along events and root motion from the animator to the character.

Some other components of AdventureSouls depend on the players model and have to be reassigned if the model is replaced. The following steps show how the player model could be replaced by the zombie model that is usually used by the enemies.

  • Open up the SoulsPlayer prefab
  • Drag the Models/Characters/SoulsZombie into Pivot
  • Add an Animator and an AnimatorProxy to it
  • Assign the SoulsPlayer Controller and SoulsPlayerAvatar Avatar to the Animator
  • Assign the SoulsPlayer as the Character for AnimatorProxy
  • Completely expand the old and new models
  • the original armature will contain Left/RightHand transforms under its Hand.L/R transform, drag those over to the new models Hand.L/R(these are used to instantiate items by the weapon and usable item slots)
  • Delete the original Model
  • In the ArmorTop/Bottom item slots assign CharacterBody to the now missing Template field, it is needed so the armor moves properly with the character model
  • On the SoulsPlayerCharacter script reassign the missing Animator to the one you just created and set SoulsZombie as the Model that is replaced by the ragdoll
  • At the bottom of SoulsPlayerCharacter you can empty out the HeadRenderer field, it is used for the character customization sliders but the zombie model does not have the needed blend shapes

When you now open up SoulsDebuggingGeneral you should be able to move around and perform actions with the Zombie. If you start the game through the title you’ll see that things there are mostly unchanged but when you start a game the model is in fact changed.

The process to replace the model may be different depending on the model used but generally, as we have seen above, the following dependencies have to be satisfied.

  • animator and model on SoulsPlayerCharacter
  • hand transforms and body renderer for the item slots

Critical

The Critical GameObject holds the actions and triggers necessary for ripostes and backstabs.

The SoulsCriticalAction is the one performed by the player, it uses a GenericTriggerArea to find potential enemies that may be critted. When it is started it forces the enemy to perform the SoulsCrittedAction which disrupts anything it was doing. This action moves the enemy to the Front(riposte) or Back(backstab) transform in order for the animations to line up.

Actor

All the actions a player can perform on its own as well as the actor are found here.

The specific Actor implementation used is the BufferedCharacterActor which will queue up actions for a short period of time. So when roll is pressed while the character is still attacking the roll will still be performed after the attack has finished

  • Sit is not really in use currently but serves as an example of a gesture that is performed until some other input arrives
  • Turn is started by the movement when the character makes a sharp turn
  • Roll is started by the SoulsPlayerCharacter when dodge is pressed and the input direction is not neutral, in the Starting/Ending events in the inspector you can see that it activates a damage while it is active.(the damage has value 0 so it destroys boxes but does not hurt enemies)
  • Dodge is started by the SoulsPlayerCharacter when dodge is pressed and the input direction is neutral
  • Jump is directly bound to the Act.Jump input by SoulsPlayerCharacter
  • Stagger is started by the SoulsCharacterBase base class that the player has in common with the enemies when the character runs out of poise from being hit
  • GuardBreak is started by the SoulsCharacterBase when a character guards and runs out of stamina or it is parried while attacking
  • Death is started by SoulsPlayerCharacter when it gets hit and health runs out, notice the SignalReceiver which calls the ResetDeath method

Items

Holds items, item slots and inventory. You can add entries to the Items field on the ListedInventory to make the character start out with certain items which is quite useful for debugging.

  • Usable is a special item slot that is just a placeholder for the three slots it has as its children. This lets us bind input and UI to that single item slot. Which one is currently active can be switched through using the F key.
  • ArmorTop/Bottom are slots for SoulsArmorItem, they need a reference to the CharacterBody in order to copy the bones over to the armor they instantiate which makes the armor mesh move with the character
  • WeaponLeft/Right are slots for SoulsWeaponItem, they have a target transform inside the character models armature which they parent their meshes to, the weapons then move because they are children of the characters hand bone. Also notice that the weapon slots have fists as their fallback item, otherwise the character would have no actions to perform when no weapons are equipped

Metrics

Holds the resource and attribute pools. Attributes are defined directly in the pool while resources are separate scripts found in the children.