Game controls
Game controls turn an object into something your visitor drives: walking, flying, or moving around a top-down map.
You add it as a trigger, not a step. Put the game-control trigger on an object and the whole controller lives in its settings — and its branches (idle, moving, jumping, running) let you react to what the character is doing.
The controller lives as long as that object does. Disable the object and it is gone; enable it again and it comes back.
A controlled object (this trigger), something solid to stand on (a floor with a rigid body and a collider), and a camera — or none, and one will be provided.
Movement
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Mode | walk, fly, or top-down |
| Forward is | where the camera looks, or the scene's own axes |
| Speed · run multiplier | metres per second, and how much faster while holding Shift |
| Acceleration · braking | how long it takes to reach speed, and to shed it |
| Turn to movement | whether the object rotates to face where it is going, and how fast |
| Key scheme | WASD, arrows, or both |
| Jump height | in metres — zero means no jumping |
| Air control | how much steering you keep mid-jump |
| Reset height | falling this far below the start puts the character back |
| Click to move | walk to a tapped point |
| Turn the view with | mouse, keys, or both |
"Half a second" means the controller applies whatever push closes the gap in half a second. Slopes, shoves and mass all argue with that push, which is what makes movement feel physical.
Zero means as fast as possible — which is not quite instant, because the character still has mass.
The body
The controller gives your object a capsule and drives it with forces, so it collides with the world properly instead of sliding through it.
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Shape | capsule or sphere |
| Radius · height | in metres |
| Offset | moves the capsule relative to the object |
| Mass | both how hard it pushes and how hard it is to shove |
| Show helper | draws the capsule in the editor |
Already built your own rigid body? The controller leaves it alone and simply steers it, taking its mass. Otherwise it makes one for you.
Your floors and walls stop the character when they have a rigid body and a collider. Plain decorative geometry is scenery, and the character walks straight through it. → Physics
Gravity comes from the space, and jump height is measured against it. A scene with game controls switches physics on even if the space had it off — otherwise nothing would move at all.
The follow camera
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| Camera | which camera follows; leave empty for a built-in one |
| Orient to | keep looking at the character, or hold a fixed angle |
| Position · aim lag | how far behind the camera runs, in seconds |
| Up-down · left-right | free, locked, or limited |
| Limits | how far it may rise or swing, in degrees |
On the first frame the rig remembers the distance and angles between your camera and the character, and holds them from then on. There are no distance or height numbers to guess — put the camera where it looks right in the viewport and it stays there.
A few behaviours are deliberate and worth expecting:
- The camera turns toward the character rather than chasing it. There is a little sideways slack; inside it the camera stays put and rotates, and only slides once the character reaches the edge. A camera welded to its subject reads as a tripod, not a camera.
- Lag applies to framing, not distance. The camera does not drift backwards as the character speeds up — that reads as an unrequested zoom, and it is what makes soft following feel queasy.
- The shot eases around behind the character while they move and you are not turning the view yourself. Locking left-right, or using top-down, switches it off.
- The camera refuses to be blocked. If something comes between it and the character, it moves in close and eases back out afterwards. It never comes nearer than half a metre.
- The wheel zooms, between roughly a third and two and a half times the distance you framed.
While the rig is driving a camera, that camera's own controls (orbit, fly) are ignored — they would fight it every frame.
Touch and gamepad
On-screen controls are drawn only on touch screens, so you can leave them on.
| Setting | What it controls |
|---|---|
| On-screen controls | show a stick and a jump button |
| Turn the view by | swiping the scene, or a second stick |
| Stick corner · jump corner | which cell of a 3×3 grid they sit in |
| Offset · button size | margin from the edge, size in pixels |
| Visibility | hide the graphics — swiping to turn still works |
A gamepad works alongside everything else with no setup at all: left stick moves, right stick looks, A jumps, bumpers and triggers run.
Reacting to what the character is doing
The same state change that runs a branch also reaches scripts and patches — a script can listen
for it, and there is a patch node with pulse and state outputs.
All three hear it at the same moment, so you can drive footstep sounds from a script while the branches handle animation, and they stay in step.
Following, without a controller
For something simpler (an enemy trailing the player, a pet, a camera target) there are follow, look at target and stop following steps.
They move the object directly, so they will not work on something physics is already driving. For that, use impulses from a script.
Next: UI cards — buttons, menus and score displays.