What is established practice for stair stepping of JPH::Character non-virtual character controller?

[slapin]

Hi, all! Happy New Year and Merry Christmas to everyone!

I use non-virtual character controller for both player and NPC controllers. Now I need them to pass stairs and low ledges. What is established approach to do that? I use root motion animations for general motion.

[jrouwe]

There's no support for that. You'll have to write something yourself (or use CharacterVirtual, which was made for this). Stair stepping typically involves:

1. Detecting that there is a step (you're blocked by something that has a normal that points towards the character)
2. Doing a collision cast upwards with the step height
3. Doing a cast forwards with a distance that is big enough to land on the step
4. Doing a cast downwards with the step height
5. Detecting that the slope the character ends up on is valid (and if not, reverting)

Since a kinematic body can only have 1 velocity per simulation step, this means that it is impossible to do this using the normal physics update (which Character uses). You'll need to implement the sweeping yourself and teleport the character if you detect a step.

[slapin]

Thanks a lot!