Rigidbody vs CharacterController (old, reposted to hear from the experts)

[frosty grotto]

Hello!⭐
I have used to work with chatacter controller for the past 3 years and it has been a very open solution to writing any physics that I needed.

However last year I switched to RigidBody and it seemed to do anything I tried before but much faster and more convinient.
I can create so many different types of Players on the same encapsulated code and not change much, when in character controller it seems to be much harder to achieve the same result.
So in modern Unity, what is the difference between ChatacterController and RigidBody? And do you think Unity has a possibility of releasing a mixed version of them in the future?
What is your opinion on such a thing as chatacter controller (capsule) collider with the built in settings (like IsGrounded, slopes control, etc) with rigidbody's .AddForce and .AddTorque.

Thank you, and happy Unite!🤩✨

[viral fox]

CC cannot be pushed by others

while RB can

unless you are building a KCC

CC is good for fps & general tps game

RB is good for party games, physics based game

[frosty grotto]

I thought that too, until I started building online fps's with rogidbody and it seemed to be so much easier and faster, including better online prediction.

Also RB only gets pushed if it has a collider attached :)

[viral fox]

great games usually just create a KCC anyway

[frosty grotto]

That sounds very interesting.
As an expert, would you recommend starting to make one now before making any serious games,
Or continue with encapsulated rigidbody characters that can fit any game?

[viral fox]

look open source github repo on KCC

[frosty grotto]

Looks great, thanks

[wet tide]

Avoid Unity's built in CC. Use Rigidbody or KCC.

[frosty grotto]

Feels like it should be deprecated at this point

[stark grotto]

The character controller perfectly fine to use in many cases. It is there for people new to unity to get a leg up. If you need something beyond it, certainly use something else. But many fine games have been made with it, and it is still worthwhile to have as a part of unity.

Now, having an ALTERNATIVE controller would be nice..

[autumn parcel]

what is KCC?

[wet tide]

Kinematic Character Controller.

[autumn parcel]

i thought so but what is it? googling it brings me to some free asset on the asset store

[wet tide]

Plenty of reading and info available through the links you just found. 😄

[autumn parcel]

so by kinematic character controller you mean "programming your own solution for player movement"?

because you can call unity's built in character controller kinematic too. or a rigidbody based one. what's not kinematic about those?

[autumn parcel]

am i right? aren't unity's built in character controller and a rigidbody based character controller also kinematic? kinematic just means it moves, doesnt it?

[stark grotto]

That's the one they mean. It is a VERY good asset that gives you a solid foundation

[stark grotto]

The CC is not kinematic. A Rigidbody controller could be kinematic or dynamic.
Kinematic just means it doesn't respond to forces

[autumn parcel]

how does it respond to forces? checking if its touching a rigidbody each frame and transferring its velocity to itself or something?

[stark grotto]

Kinematic means it doesn't respond to forces. You would react manually.
It would just collide and stop, unless the other object is a dynamic rb, the it would push the other object

[frosty grotto]

The point of kinematic character controller is that it's the most open controller there is.
You can design it to absolutely any game you want with any imaginable size as long as you do it right🙂

The problem is that sometimes it's over engineering, but once you build one player it becomes pretty easy to build more.

The question is if it's even worth it to work with one, or if it's just better to use the existing methods.

I started out with CC and it was pretty fun, but only after a few years I tried doing multiplayer and a third person shooter system with rigidbody, and it was just 10 times easier and more straight forward with rigidbody.
I may switch to Kinematic if that would still be the best solution for large scaled games in the future.