How to apply custom movement system to FollowerEntity?

General
1
  • A* version: 5.3.3
  • Unity version: 6000.0.34
  • Recast Graph

Hello. I am trying to convert from RichAI to FollowerEntity.
In RichAI, I set canMove to false and use only the desiredVelocity to move the character using a physics-based system I created. However, I found out that in FollowerEntity, disabling canMove also stops updating desiredVelocity.
All I need is the desiredVelocity, excluding the actual movement. Is it difficult to use this approach with FollowerEntity? Thank you.

2

Hi

You could remove the tag component SimulateMovementFinalize from the FollowerEntity.entity entity. This will make the agent do all calculations except actually move the agent.

3

I tried removing it but ‘desiredVelocity’ is not updated from Vector3.zero.

4

Unity Version : 6000.1.1f1
A* Version : 5.3.7
Grid graph.

Hello,

I have the same concern than Lim. I have disabled the tag, and tested the code with LocalAvoidance2D demo scene.

_follower = GetComponent<FollowerEntity>();

if (_follower == null)
       return;

World world = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld;
_entityManager = world.EntityManager;

_entity = _follower.entity;

if (_entityManager.HasComponent<SimulateMovementFinalize>(_entity))
      _entityManager.RemoveComponent<SimulateMovementFinalize>(_entity);

It seems to work fine. Then I tried to find a way to get a vector to make my gameobject move manually every frame with the following code :

With desiredVelocity :

direction = _followerEntity.desiredVelocity.normalized
_characterMovement.SetMovement(direction);

With steeringTarget:

 direction = (_followerEntity.steeringTarget - transform.position).normalized;
_characterMovement.SetMovement(direction);

DesiredVelocity doesn’t seem to be relevent. I tryed other solution like using the steeringTarget or managing the movement with the waypoints of the vectorPath array, but no solution give the expected result. I feel bad because the solution should be really simple to get. And I think that this solution will interest a lot of people because it gives the ability to use the FollowerEntity like a computation class, and not necessarly like a movement script which give the ability to integrate in architectures that required to manage the movement with an other class.

Thank you fo your help.

Regards,

5

To the best of my knowledge, when you want to get the velocity you’ll want to get it from the ResolvedMovement component.

I was able to pull targetPoint like this:

  public void GetDesiredVelocity(){
      var entityManager = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager;
      Debug.Log(entityManager.GetComponentData<ResolvedMovement>(follower.entity).targetPoint);
  }

It’s not a “direction” I don’t think but let me know what you think.

6

Hi,

Thank you for your replay. This solution is suppose to work according to the class documentation. I tested it in the LocalAvoidance2D demo, but it doens’t work. Here is the code I used to realise the test :

using Pathfinding;
using Pathfinding.ECS;
using Unity.Entities;
using UnityEngine;

public class DisableFinalizeMovement : MonoBehaviour
{
    private FollowerEntity _follower;
    private EntityManager _entityManager;
    private Entity _entity;

    void Start()
    {
        _follower = GetComponent<FollowerEntity>();

        if (_follower == null)
            return;

        World world = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld;
        _entityManager = world.EntityManager;

        _entity = _follower.entity;

        if (_entityManager.HasComponent<SimulateMovementFinalize>(_entity))
        {
            _entityManager.RemoveComponent<SimulateMovementFinalize>(_entity);
        }

    }

    void Update()
    {
        var entityManager = World.DefaultGameObjectInjectionWorld.EntityManager;
        //Debug.Log("Solution 1 : " + _follower.desiredVelocity);
        Debug.Log("Solution 2 : " + entityManager.GetComponentData<ResolvedMovement>(_follower.entity).targetPoint);
    }
}

To test it, I removed 8 robots entities to keep 2 of them. On the first, i added my component.

When I launch the game and I click, the second robot moves to the correct point. The first one doesn’t move, and the console messages doesn’t give the correct information.

The orange gizmos update correctly, so I guess the internal mecanism knows where to go. I can move the character by using the vectorPath , but i won’t benefit from the local avoidance, nor the off mesh links capabilities.

Regards,

7

Hm, would you be able to start a new thread with your replies copy/pasted in them? This may get a little long and I don’t want the original poster to get tons of notifications spammed from it. Posting a link to this thread in your thread will also post a link to each other so the context won’t be lost :+1: