ClimbMovement
Climbing in games has been a staple for decades, with modern games like uncharted or tomb raider having the player scaling mountains making death defying jumps trying to reach treasure.
None of those however compare to the experience of climbing in VR. It is so good that some of the best selling VR games such as The Climb use it is their primary mechanic. Danging hundreds of meters above the ground hanging off a cliff face is as close as you can get in gaming to the real thing. The sense of vertigo real enough to give the player a real fear of letting go, yet without the tiring of arms and the risk of actual injury.
The climbing mechanic in VR is also one of the few where moving the player through the world, while the player in reality is standing still in their room waving their arms around, tricks the brain enough to fight off motion sickness.
The climbing system in XR tools is very versatile but as it combines a few objects together does take a bit more setup then some of the other movement functions. It can also be combined with the other movement functions so you can use direct movement to walk up to a wall, and then use the climbing function to scale the wall.
As mentioned setting up the climbing system requires a few more steps.
First, the climbing function uses our pickup function from the Pickup and throw system. You thus need to add the Pickup functions to both hands.
Next you need to add the Climb movement function as a child to the ARVROrigin node, note that as with other movement functions this will add a PlayerBody node to your ARVROrigin node if it doesn't already exist.
Your setup should now look like this:
Next select the climb movement node and link the two pickup functions:
note, we may make this automatic in a future version.
Now that our player is able to climb, we need to define the things they can climb on. This is accomplished by inheriting the objects/Object_climbable.tscn scene, simply open the Scene menu, select New Inherited Scene... and select the Obejct_climbable.tscn scene from the xr tools library.
This scene sets up a static body with a collision shape and a script that allows you to grab that static body. When the player grabs the static body moving your hand will cause the player to move instead of the hand.
You can create small objects to create climbing anchors that the player must grab and create an experience where the player needs to be very precise, or you can just create one big collision shape the player can climb on without caring much where the player holds the shape.
We're taking the later as an example, the screenshot below sets up a scene, I've renamed the root node, added a MeshInstance with a box, and then added a collision shape to the CollisionShape node giving it the same size as the block:
Now save the scene and add it to your main scene and your player can climb the block.
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
| Enabled | When ticked this node will controll the players movement. |
| Order | The order in which this movement is processed in case multiple movement functions are active. |
| Forward Push | When the player lets go they are pushed away from the object they were holding by this force |
| Fling Multiplier | If the player lets go their current momentum is multiplied by this amount allowing the player to "fling" themselves off a wall. |
| Velocity Averages | The number of velocity samples to take to determine the players velocity when they let go. |
| Left Pickup | Identifies the left hand pickup function used to grab climbable objects with. |
| Right Pickup | Identifies the right hand pickup function used to grab climbable objects with. |
No additional properties on this object type.