There are many times when you don't need to make a character controller from scratch - a lot of simple first-person games use Unity's default first-person controller. You may also have a game where a character controller is not needed at all, such as a top-down strategy or puzzle game. Unity also has a third-person controller, which can work well in some circumstances. However, if you know the kind of behavior your want from your character controller, it is sometimes easier to make it yourself rather than trying to find one that suits your needs.
When designing a character controller, I like to first imagine how I want the player to see the world and the character. Do I want the player to be up close to the environment, seeing things first-hand?
Or do I want the player to see the character they are playing, see that character's animations and how that character interacts with the world?
For this game we will make a third-person character controller.
The next decision to make is deciding what the player's input will be to move the character. In some third-person games, the player clicks a point for the character to move there. In other games the player uses WASD or the controller joystick to move the character. There are also cases where the character moves automatically based on the context of the world - ie. moving toward an NPC to talk to them.
Since we want to offer controller support for this game, it makes the most sense to use WASD since that has a direct mapping to the controller joystick.
We also need to ask ourselves "Can the player control the camera?"
In some third-person games the camera automatically follows the character with no input from the user. In other games, the user controls the camera with the mouse or with the right joystick. We will use the latter option.
For this character controller I've decided to use Unity's NavMesh because it automatically handles keeping the player on the ground and smooth gradual movement. The NavMesh allows you to determine if objects in the scene are "walkable" - meaning the top of the object is a surface the player can walk on - or "not walkable" - meaning that object is an obstacle or in some way inaccessible. Once you'd baked the NavMesh you can see what areas the player can walk on as a blue surface.
The scripting part is fairly simple, we just need to attach a NavMeshAgent component to our character and then tell it which was to move.
Unity also comes with a "Smooth Follow" script which can be attached to the camera and set to target the character, that was the camera moves when the character moves. We can also use Unity's "Simple Mouse Rotator" script to give the player control of the camera direction.
The final step is going to be giving the player a ranged attack. A ranged attack can be anything that is fired from a distance such as a gun or a spell. I think a spell would work better in the kind of world I am creating, so I will make a projectile object with a particle effect like a spell, and put it in a folder called "Resources" (it's important this one is spelled correctly, because this is the only folder Unity can load from at runtime).
Then we need to instantiate that projectile when the player fires.
Then on the projectile itself we want to tell it to move forward on every frame (since we are instantiating it facing the direction we want it to move, it should only ever move forward).
And that's it! Now we have a third-person character controller that moves with WASD and uses the mouse to look around, and can cast a spell at enemies.
Check out the full video tutorial on Pluralsight! Section 4 will cover scripted interactions.
