Creating momentum based physics on a player character

At first, I thought that the task of creating some kind of momentum based physics for my character would be both an easy and fun thing to do in UE4. I thought this because of the amazing jobs that Epic and the community have done regarding physics-based vehicle assets and blueprints but so far I have found no way to work past my issues here.

The plan was to take some of the scripts of a game mode such as the AdvancedVehicleGameMode or the RollingBallGameMode and implement the physics of that to a character that was using a standard CharacterMovement Blueprint. if there’s any way of doing it like this id love to know but I think that maybe I’m going about this all wrong.

I wanted to use this kind of physics to allow for a player (very similar to your standard ThirdPersonShooter game type) to be able to go fast enough to go around loops and perform stunts while still being able to shoot. As well as this I think the mechanic would allow for quick strafing manoeuvres such as those seen in games like overwatch that is simply impossible to create within a vehicle (I think). The best of both worlds really.

This problem is just too difficult for me to work out. I’m fairly new to all of this and I hope that this isn’t too glaringly obvious haha. If anyone wants any more info please don’t hesitate to ask as many questions as you want.

Any help or thoughts on the issue would be greatly appreciated.

That’s a pretty tall order. You’d have to do almost all of it from scratch. Honestly, I’ve been working with UE4 for a while and I feel pretty good about my knowledge, but trying to do something like what you’re suggesting sounds pretty scary to me.

You’ll have a hard time using CharacterMovementComponent because it does its own faux-physics. You won’t get good behavior if you turn physics simulation on for the capsule component. Turning physics on in the mesh causes issues with animation but there may be ways around that thanks to new improvements in the physics/animation area. Though it is still quite limited.

If anyone has done this, I doubt they’re sharing their secrets. So I don’t think there’s any ‘way’ to do what you’re asking. If you try to do it you would be on the cutting-edge of game dev. That’s a pretty frustrating place for a beginner so, at best, it would be a long period of learning and trial-and-error. But if you pulled it off, it would be quite impressive. Maybe this should be a long term goal? As you learn you can make notes about what might help you pull off physics based character movement.

You may also find others who would want to collaborate on something like that. You’re definitely not the only one who would like such a system.

Thank you so much for the answer. I thought it was pretty confusing, the whole thing really is a tall order. Nice to know that it’s not just me that is seeing this and thinking it’s all a bit much! definitely ill keep in mind that it should be more of a long-term thing.

The questions still open! Even if it just makes you think of this sort of thing out yourself! I thought it was a really cool problem to solve at least!