Game: In a simple 2D Portrait Game made in Unity, I have a GameObject (Player) that has a fixed location and which is moving upwards. The Camera follows the Player and animated Obstacles are spawning from time to time moving left to right. The attached Screenshot shows the Scene.
The Problem:
The Movement is not smooth, as it seems like the Player is jittering. I think I already identified one of the causes: Big variation of Time.deltaTime. Average value is 0.0167, but I had variations. Minimum was 0.00177, maximum value was 0.2249519.
Settings:
Target Framerate is 60. I use Unity 2019.4.2f1 and as build target an iPhone X with iOS 14.2.
Scripts
public class Player: MonoBehaviour
{
float speed = 5f;
void Update()
{
transform.Translate(0,speed*Time.deltaTime,0);
}
}
public class CamFollow : MonoBehaviour
{
public Transform Player;
private Vector3 FollowVector;
void LateUpdate()
{
FollowVector = Player.position - new Vector3(0, -4.0f, 10);
transform.position = Vector3.Lerp(transform.position, FollowVector, Time.deltaTime * 4f);
}
}
Note: I need to use Lerp, because the Player may lower or increase the speed for one second, then the camera gently moves to the new position, before changing back. For the Obstacles I don't have a Script. They are moving, by using the Animation Component. For the Obstacles I only loop a change of the x value of the position.
My alternative solutions:
1. Changing the value for Time.deltaTime to a constant value of 0.01666667f:
void Update()
{
transform.Translate(0,speed*0.01666667f,0);
}
This makes the Player Object jitter a lot in the Unity Editor but only a little on the device
2. Using Fixed Update both for the Camera Follow and the Player Movement
This makes the movement and camera follow perfectly smooth, but the animated objects jitter a lot. I know Unity wants to adress the deltaTime issue in one of the next updates. But there should be a solution for my problem, so did anybody have a similiar problem, which could be solved? I prefer the 2nd alternative, because the movement looked really smooth and nice, so can I somehow make the animation part of "fixedUpdate"?
The variation in the 'deltaTime' is to be expected.
The variation is large on the PC because you are running on a complex computer with a complex operating system and lots of other applications running simultaneously, each with a multitude of threads, which every once in a while want to do some work. Thus, the scheduler of the operating system cannot guarantee that you are going to get a time slice at the precise moment that you want it in order to render your next frame.
The variation is smaller on the mobile device because it is a much simpler machine with a lot less going on, so the scheduler is able to give you time slices close to the precise intervals that you are asking.
You are already taking this variation into account when you do
transform.Translate( 0, speed * Time.deltaTime, 0 );
This is a fundamental technique in game development: the frame rate is never constant, so the distance by which you must move an object on each frame depends on the precise amount of time elapsed between this frame and the previous frame.
So, that part is fine.
Your problem lies in
transform.position = Vector3.Lerp( transform.position, FollowVector, Time.deltaTime * 4f );
Here you are passing Time.deltaTime * 4f for parameter t of Vector3.Lerp(). I have no idea what you are trying to accomplish, but the number you need to pass there needs to be a gradual transition between 0 and 1, and instead you are passing a randomly varying number of seconds multiplied by some magic constant 4. This does not look correct.
A couple of options that I can think of:
Always use 0.5 for t so that the camera always rushes to the right position and then slows down as it gets closer to it.
Calculate a separate speed vector for the camera, then move the camera using a translation just as you do for the player.
Related
So the last 2 months I had been reworking my PlayerController to be rigidbody based for the sake of having more interactions with rigidbodies i.e. pushing objects. This went all pretty well, until I started testing my game in a standalone build. I immediately noticed strange jitter/stutter in the background (the player runs smooth) when v-sync is turned off (with v-sync is turned off my computer runs the game at 300fps+). At first I thought it had something to do with Cinemachine, I'm using CinemachineFreeLook, but to be honest as of now I'm unsure if Cinemachine is what's causing the jitter/stutter. Something worth noting is that the jitter/stutter is not constant, while the fps seems constant the jitter/stutter might go away for like 20 seconds and come back after. I have obviously done alot of research the past week and have been reading plenty of posts about FixedUpdate vs. Update, but unfortunately without any luck.
I tried to add as much information as possible to this post to give a good understanding of my project, but first the stuff I already tried;
Changing the Fixed Timestep from 0,02 to 0,01. (This kind of works,
but I would like to prevent changing the Fixed Timestep)
Turning on interpolate/extrapolate. (Now there is jitter with both
v-sync turned on and off)
Changing the CinemachineBrain Update Method to FixedUpdate/LateUpdate
instead of SmartUpdate.
Deconstructing the scene and removing some heavy on performance stuff
like Volumetric Lighting and Planar Reflections.
Creating a really barebones PlayerController with only the code to
move the player.
Removing the library folder of my project. (Read this somewhere
online, but no luck)
Turning of my Xbox One controller, to make sure there is only one
input in use.
Swithed the building from Windowed Fullscreen to Exclusive
Fullscreen.
Turned off one monitor while testing.
Move all my code to FixedUpdate.
Added these 3 scripts and changed the Script Execution Order
(Couldn't get this to work)
Put the input logic in FixedUpdate.
Below you can see both my movement scripts, one is part of my actual PlayerController, while the other was the one I wrote for the barebones Player.
void FixedUpdate() {
_isGrounded = Physics.CheckSphere(_groundChecker.position, GroundDistance, Ground, QueryTriggerInteraction.Ignore);
_inputs = Vector3.zero;
_inputs.x = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
_inputs.z = Input.GetAxis("Vertical");
_inputs.Normalize();
if (_inputs != Vector3.zero)
transform.forward = _inputs;
_body.MovePosition(_body.position + _inputs * Speed * Time.fixedDeltaTime);
}
This is the script I wrote for the barebones player controller.
void FixedUpdate() {
if (pushControllerScr._pushBlocker) {
input = Vector3.zero;
} else {
input = new Vector3(InputManager.MainHorizontal(), 0, InputManager.MainVertical());
}
RunAxis();
inputDir = input.normalized;
inputDir.Normalize();
// Makes the player able to move, while not landing or being dead
if (!landState && !climbManagerScr.isClimbing) {
Move(inputDir, running);
}
}
void Move(Vector3 inputDir, bool running) {
if (inputDir != Vector3.zero) {
float targetRotation = Mathf.Atan2(inputDir.x, inputDir.z) * Mathf.Rad2Deg + cameraT.eulerAngles.y;
transform.eulerAngles = Vector3.up * Mathf.SmoothDampAngle(transform.eulerAngles.y, targetRotation, ref turnSmoothVelocity, GetModifiedSmoothTime(turnSmoothTime));
}
float targetSpeed = ((running) ? runSpeed : movementSpeed) * inputDir.magnitude;
stateInfoBaseLayer = _anim.GetCurrentAnimatorStateInfo(0);
if (stateInfoBaseLayer.IsTag("Climbing") || stateInfoBaseLayer.IsTag("Standing")) {
currentSpeed = 0f;
} else {
currentSpeed = Mathf.SmoothDamp(currentSpeed, targetSpeed, ref speedSmoothVelocity, GetModifiedSmoothTime(speedSmoothTime));
}
if (stateInfoBaseLayer.IsTag("AirIdle") && currentSpeed > walkSpeed) {
currentSpeed = walkSpeed;
}
velocity = transform.forward * currentSpeed + Vector3.up * _rb.velocity.y;
if (_capsuleCol.enabled) {
_rb.MovePosition(_rb.position + velocity * Time.deltaTime);
}
}
This is what I actually use in my PlayerController Script
Below you can see some footage of the jitter/stutter. It was quite hard to capture it, since using any recording software like OBS dropped the fps in my game to a point where the jitter/stutter was disappearing. Sorry for the phone recording, but this was honestly the only way.
Footage of my game showcasing the jitter/stutter especially noticable around the yellow ship.
And finally here's an album with some relevant settings in the inspector. Imgur Album
Looking at your recording, it looks as if the player is smooth and everything else.
From my experience 99% of the time means the jitter comes from the camera not being synced up correctly to the player.
It seems you have done the right things, and usually combining the following should work fine:
CinemachineBrain should update on FixedUpdate
Use interpolate/exrapolate on your player's Rigidbody (we chose extrapolate)
Apply forces/changes to physics objects solely in FixedUpdate
If you do all 3 together, this should work smoothly regardless of vsync, frame rate, fixed delta time, etc
Obviously your specific project might have something else that's messing it up; but I've seen this issue countless times and usually these combined steps should solve it.
I know the title isnt very explanatory, but here's my problem:
I have a player (merely a cube with a rigidbody, a collider and a movement script), and I have a floor made of small 1 by 1 by 1 cubes (cubes with box colliders).
For some reason unknown to me, when my player cube falls and tries to collide horizontally with the floor, he just phases through... But want him to get blocked by the cubes just like it does vertically. Any help would be greatly appreciated ;)
heres how the scene looks like
heres a cube object
heres the player object
Here's a gif of the player going through the floor
Here's my c# player movement script (I know its very bad, but I prefer to put this here just in case its linked to my problem) :
void ApplyMovement()
{
transform.position += new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));
}
If you need any more info to help me just tell me, I'll provide it as fast as I can.
The value of
new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"))
is framerate-dependent. This means the faster the framerate the faster your object will move. This is usually not what you want. Instead use Time.deltaTime
// Adjust the speed in the inspector
public float speedMultiplicator = 1;
//...
new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical")) * speedMultiplicator * Time.deltaTime
to get a framerate-independent movement. Also see the example in Input.GetAxis.
When dealing with RigidBody never change the transform.position (and rotation) directly!
If you would want to make the RigidBody jump to a certain position rather use
rigidBody.position = transform.position + ...;
However what you want is a smooth movement in order to keep the collision detection intact. So you should use RigidBody.MovePosition instead
rigidBody.MovePosition(transform.position + ...);
You don't have to deal with force etc.
Also add a RigidBody component to the floor objects. Even ifnthe object is not moving this improves the collision detection (at the cost of performance in the Physics engine ofcourse). And since the objects are not supposed to move set
isKinematic -> true
use Gravity -> false
you can also set freeze position and freeze rotation.
On both floor and player objects set Collision Detection -> Continous Dynamic. This improves the collision detection and looks for collisions also between frames.
Be aware, however, that dynamic detection is quite expensive so use it only if there is still trouble with too fast objects.
On the player you might want to also use interpolate as well.
Finally
Note that continuous collision detection is intended as a safety net to catch collisions in cases where objects would otherwise pass through each other, but will not deliver physically accurate collision results, so you might still consider decreasing the fixed Time step value in the TimeManager inspector
to make the simulation more precise, if you run into problems with fast moving objects.
For more information see the RigidBody manual and the Colliders manual
I recreated the scenario you described on my end. I put your "ApplyMovement" code in "Update". I was basically able to reproduce your results.
It seems to me that the issue might be Freezing Position X/Z on the Player. I think since you are doing that, you're telling the Rigidbody component that it is not allowed to modify the X/Z positions of the objects as part of it's collision resolution and physics simulation. When I turn those two off, I get results that are (I think) closer to what you're looking for.
One note: your "ApplyMovement" code is frame-locked, meaning your player will move at different speeds at different frame rates. To solve this, you'd need to multiply your Input.GetAxis values by Time.deltaTime.
Also, if your player moves too fast, it'll still be able to pass through collisions and cause odd behavior, so be sure to limit the max movement rate of the player to some reasonable value.
You should be applying a force to the Rigidbody of the character instead of directly manipulating the transform.position (this is preventing the physics engine from resolving the collisions). You're also freezing the X and Z position on the Rigidbody; you don't want that because it entirely prevents the Rigidbody from manipulating those values.
Instead of transform.postion += ... first get a reference to the Rigidbody somewhere in your script (best done in an Awake() method):
private Rigidbody _body;
private void Awake() {
_body = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
}
Then make sure the vector built from your inputs is being applied to the object's "movement," not its position:
Vector3 inputVector = new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));
// You can multiply this vector by a float to adjust "speed"
_body.ApplyForce(inputVector, ForceMode.VelocityChange);
Finally, you should read up on the different ForceMode options and decide which one fits your preferences: https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/ForceMode.html
Don't forget this should happen in a FixedUpdate(), not an Update() (all physics operations should be done in FixedUpdate())
As a side note, there is also the possibility your rigidbodies still up moving too quickly and passing through each-other. Even when you're using forces and velocities, this is possible so if your run into this case down the line, investigate Collision Detection Modes. TLDR; they're settings for performance vs accuracy trade-offs.
I am working on a game where i need to shoot the ball at an angle and power defined by 2 sliders (1 angle slider, 1 power slider). I currently have this code to control the launching of the ball:
public void shoot()
{
float angle = angleSlider.GetComponent<Slider>().value;
float power = powerSlider.GetComponent<Slider>().value;
gameObject.SetActive(false);
ball.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().simulated = true;
Vector2 releaseVector = Quaternion.AngleAxis(angle, transform.up) * transform.forward;
ball.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = releaseVector * (power/3);
}
with this current code it works almost perfect apart from one thing. When the angle is like between 30 and 60, the ball is launched well but if i set it to 0 degrees the ball would barely move and on the contrary if i set it to 90 degrees, the ball launches with much more power. How can i set a constant speed for all degrees so that the speed is only affected by the power slider only please? Thanks.
Typically, you shouldn't set the velocity of a rigidbody directly. Per the Unity docs...
In most cases you should not modify the velocity directly, as this can result in unrealistic behaviour.
Instead, you usually want to impart a physical impulse to the ball using an API like AddForce or AddRelativeForce
That is easy.. You have to normalize the releaseVector.
ball.GetComponent<Rigidbody2D>().velocity = releaseVector.normalized * (power/3);
Then adjust the power to what you want. That way you will have the direction u wanted and speed depends on the power value.
If you want to know what normalize do, you can find more information here;
https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Vector3.Normalize.html
I am working on the friction for a square object for after it is done being pushed by the player. The block's movements are controlled purely through script using transform.Translate(velocity) each frame and only a boxcollider2D. I am speculating that because i am controlling the block's movements each frame manually is the reason i can't seem to get the boxcolliders2D's physics material 2D friction to work.
Basically, I am trying to recreate the built in physics similar to rigidbodies by using transform.translate, or use the built in physics if possible. So far, i've landed on something like this
newVelocity.x -= ( 1 / (newVelocity.x * newVelocity.x));
In an attempt to reduce the velocity.x each frame until it hits 0 and shorts out. Obviously, this falls apart when the velocity.x becomes a decimal number. I'm stumped on what i should be doing to achieve a friction similar to rigid bodies where it slows down a little at first and then much faster towards the end as it stops. Any and all help appreciated, thanks in advance!
You could compare the signs of the velocity before and after calculating the change in velocity, and set the velocity to zero when the sign changes, like so:
newVelocity.x -= ( 1 / (newVelocity.x * newVelocity.x));
if(Mathf.Sign(previousVelocity.x) != Mathf.Sign(newVelocity.x)) {
newVelocity.x = 0f;
}
One thing, though, is that normal friction is not calculated using the above equation, it's calculated as follows:
newVelocity.x -= frictionCoefficient*Time.fixedDeltaTime;
And with this, you wouldn't need to compare the velocity to the previous velocity as you can just say if the velocity is low, it's zero. You could still compare the previous velocity sign stuff if you wanted to though, but this is probably more efficient
if(newVelocity.x < 0.01f) {
newVelocty.x = 0f;
}
I made a simple networking xna game using c# and lidgren. But velocity of objects are different on friend's computer - resolution of window is the same, fps are the same (both 60), application is the same, but he's character is just slower for some reason. For some time his velocity is equal to mine, but then it slows down again.
Other friends do have equal velocities as I do. What could be a problem? The program adjusts movement according to fps, so there is probably no problem in fps.
Without seeing your code its hard to say for sure.
The program adjusts movement according to fps
Well it's generally better to think of animation as a function elapsed since the last update rather than frames per second. That way, the animation will take the same amount of real world time to complete regardless of FPS whether it be fixed or variable update.
Movement deltas should take into account time elapsed since last game update not last/current FPS.
e.g.
public Vector3 Velocity;
public Vector3 Position;
public void Update(GameTime gameTime)
{
float elapsed = (float)gameTime.ElapsedGameTime.TotalSeconds;
// Apply acceleration
Vector3 acceleration = force / Mass;
Velocity += acceleration * elapsed;
// Apply psuedo drag
Velocity *= DragFactor;
// Apply velocity
Position += Velocity * elapsed;
.
.
.
You said you're using lindgren to make it multiplayer? Maybe it's rubberbanding due to latency. Try checking it on 2 computers on lan to see if it resolves the issue.
Possible there's different settings to lindgren to specify how to handle syncing or prediction.