Version 3 Details

Justin

Administrator
Staff member
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Version 3 will be pre-released on the Opsive Store the week of October 10!

Version 3 will be released on the Asset Store after a successful pre-release phase and all of the documentation/videos have been updated. We've received a lot of interest for version 3 so we decided to do a pre-release phase for those who are really itching to get their hands on it.

We are expecting those participating in the pre-release phase to already be familiar with version 2 as version 3 will not have updated documentation, videos, or add-ons/integration support. Before version 3 hits the Asset Store we will have the complete set of documentation and videos ready to go. The add-ons and integrations will be added after the controller has been released on the Asset Store.

We will be monitoring the version 2 to 3 update process but are expecting version 2 to be supported until the end of the year. You will be able to migrate your character from version 2 to version 3 without having to recreate the character. Unity 2021.3 will be the minimum supported version of Unity.

The major version 3 changes include:

New Locomotion Logic
The Character Locomotion movement logic has been reworked for version 3. I actually started with a new component and slowly built up the logic with lessons learned from version 2. Things like the protruding objects are now smoothly handled. Box colliders are now supported. The Kinematic Object Manager has been removed and the Rigidbody component is responsible for the interpolation.

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Modular Item System
Santiago (@Sangemdoko) spent many months developing a new modular item system. I am extremely impressed with what he has accomplished. In version 2 the magic item contains modular actions for the different states of the magic item. In version 3 every component has this flexibility. This is really going to open up a lot of possibilities for new functionality without having to change the item class.
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Character Model Switching
Switching the character model at runtime has been a hot topic on the forum and I'm happy to say that it is now supported out of the box. A new Model Manager component allows you to easily switch between the different character models.

Improved Editors
All of the major editors have been rewritten using Unity's UIToolkit. This is the most noticeable when you select the character at runtime - the performance is no longer degraded because IMGUI isn't redrawing all of the elements every frame.

New Demo Scene
For version 3 we decided to take a new approach to the demo scene. We have a simplified prototype scene that shows all of the functionality in different zones. The new characters (called Atlas and Rhea) are going to be the generic characters that we use for all of our products.

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And Much More
In addition to these items there have been a ton of features and improvements that aren't large enough to need their own topic. Aim Assist has gotten a makeover. The Animation Event Trigger class has been improved. TextMeshPro is now being used instead of the old UGUI text. It goes on and on.

Migration
The update from version 1 to 2 was a complete rewrite so you had to start from scratch with a new character. In version 3 there is a new Migration Manager tool that will help you migrate your version 2 character, camera, and item to version 3. We will have detailed documentation and videos on how to migrate when the release gets closer.

Reworked Controller Variants
We received a lot of feedback that the current variants (UFPS, TPC, FPC, UCC, etc) are confusing. As an example, a lot of times people don't know that UFPS doesn't include melee weapons. We agree and are reworking the structure. We will now only have three variants at release:

UFPS
Third Person Controller
Ultimate Character Controller

UFPS includes a first person perspective with all items. TPC includes a third person perspective with all items. The Ultimate Character Controller includes both perspectives and all items. Simple.

Price
Version 3 is a major update and we have spent significant development resources creating it so there will be an upgrade cost. If you purchased the character controller within 3 months of the release the upgrade will be free. If you purchased it earlier than that it will be a 50% upgrade fee.

The regular price of the Ultimate Character Controller will be $250. This means that the cost to upgrade will be $125. If you purchased a variant that will not be in version 3 (such as the First Person Controller) you will be able to upgrade to the next best-variant for version 3. For example with the First Person Controller you will be able to upgrade to UFPS for 50% off the UFPS price. UFPS will have its price increased to $125. There will also be appropriate upgrades set if you would like to upgrade to the Ultimate Character Controller from a lower variant.

If you purchased on the Asset Store and would like to upgrade to the pre-release on the Opsive Store you can send me a PM with your invoice number and I'll generate a coupon.

VR Add-On
We will not be updating the VR Add-On for version 3 at this time. The Unity VR setup has changed since the initial release and we do not have the most recent hardware in order to be able to continue to support it. If you purchased the VR Add-On in the past three months and would like a refund please get in contact with us.

Feel free to post any questions below. I have been following the version 3 request thread and unfortunately some requested items aren't able to make the initial release. Similar to version 2 we plan on actively updating and maintaining the controller so they could show up sooner rather than later.
 
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This looks awesome. I love the look of new demo scene.

Curious about the UFPS instead of FPS. Does this mean that Melee in first person is only available through UCC?

Will owners of both TPC and FPS be able to upgrade as owners of UCC?

Congrats to you and the team. Can not wait to give this a go and see what else you all have up your sleeves!
 
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Curious about the UFPS instead of FPS. Does this mean that Melee in first person is only available through UCC?
No, UFPS will now have melee weapons included as well. It is essentially the new First Person Controller variant.

Will owners of TPC and FPS be able to upgrade as owners of UCC?
On the Asset Store this isn't possible but if you purchased on the Opsive Store we can definitely make this happen.

Congrats to you and the team. Can not wait to give this a go and see what else you all have up your sleves!
Thanks! We are really proud of this release.
 
Ok, thank you. I bought through you so I'll be knocking on your message box when given the green light ;) Can't wait!
 
1. Will the current integrations work after the update? For example, integration with Ultimate Inventory System and Behavior Designer?
2. How about AI optimization? In version 2, performance dropped significantly on mobile devices.
 
1. Will the current integrations work after the update? For example, integration with Ultimate Inventory System and Behavior Designer?
All of the integrations will need to be updated. We won't have any updated integrations on day 1 of the pre-release but will slowly be adding them. Inventory and Behavior Designer will be the highest priority integrations. Before we fully stop supporting version 2 we will have the current integration list updated.

2. How about AI optimization? In version 2, performance dropped significantly on mobile devices.
Most of that is related to updating the Animator with lots of agents. Unfortunately on this I don't think you are really going to see the benefit until Unity updates the Animator for DOTS.
 
Does 50% off for version 2 holders apply for people switching over from the unity asset store to the opsive store? Since the time of purchase I switched to purchasing assets straight from the developers store to better suppost them, so I would hate to have to go back to buying from the unity store.
 
First of all, congratulations! :D Really looking forward to upgrading. Just wanted to ask, I happen to own both UFPS and UFPC, how will upgrading work in this case? Thanks.
 
Excited to try it out! Networking is my biggest question, will this new character make it easier to support photon fusion? I see mention of a new way to handle interpolation via rigidbody, does that mean it's not interpolated kinematically?
 
Does 50% off for version 2 holders apply for people switching over from the unity asset store to the opsive store? Since the time of purchase I switched to purchasing assets straight from the developers store to better suppost them, so I would hate to have to go back to buying from the unity store.

Thanks for the support!

Yes, we don't have a way to automatically apply the 50% off in that situation but if you send me a PM with your invoice I can generate a coupon.

First of all, congratulations! :D Really looking forward to upgrading. Just wanted to ask, I happen to own both UFPS and UFPC, how will upgrading work in this case? Thanks.
Thanks! With UFPC (the First Person Controller, correct?) you will be able to upgrade for 50% of the version 3 UFPS price so that's $62.50.

Excited to try it out! Networking is my biggest question, will this new character make it easier to support photon fusion? I see mention of a new way to handle interpolation via rigidbody, does that mean it's not interpolated kinematically?
In the initial releases the networking API won't work and will cause compiler errors if you enable it. After release one of the top priorities will be to bring the PUN add-on back, and I know that there are some community members here who have offered to help implement other implementations. I am holding off on any of that work until after the pre-release is out.

It's still a kinematic character controller. There is no KinematicObjectManager now and can instead be interpolated using the Rigidbody settings.
 
Price
Version 3 is a major update and we have spent significant development resources creating it so there will be an upgrade cost. If you purchased the character controller within 3 months of the release the upgrade will be free. If you purchased it earlier than that it will be a 50% upgrade fee.

Does this include the partial variants? I recently just purchased the UFPS version off the asset store. Will I be getting V3 for free or will I need to pay to upgrade when it is released?
 
Does this include the partial variants? I recently just purchased the UFPS version off the asset store. Will I be getting V3 for free or will I need to pay to upgrade when it is released?
I am not sure on how much granularity there is with the upgrade system so we'll see. If you purchased UFPS within the past day or two for $125 you will definitely get v3 for free. I'm not sure on the time duration for older purchases versus upgrades yet.
 
We were hoping to release this week but unfortunately it doesn't look like it's going to happen. On our build machine when we create the packages we are getting a Unity error that nobody seems to know how to solve. I don't want to release on a Friday so hopefully we'll be able to get this solved and release early next week.

Edit: Error solved. Turned out to be a missing prefab reference within a [SerializeReference] object. That one was a pain.
 
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It's nice the Kinematic Object Manager was removed. When I tried to write networking integration with client side prediction for UCC 2, the manager certainly made things very hard during reconciliation/rollback.

The character model switching is also something I'm looking forward to. I'm actually doing a system like that right now and and it's great that it's now builtin rather than having to build it myself.

The modular item system looks good. The previous item system was fine but it definitely was rough in the edges. This new one looks better.

I'll be upgrading to UCC 3 on my next project. I've already written networking code for a custom character controller for my current project. The networking add-ons are also not ready yet which are vital to my projects. So I'll wait a while before upgrading.

By the way, do we have benchmarks on the new locomotion logic? In UCC 2, the locomotion system is very taxing that performance degrades on mobile with a few UCC characters walking around. I remember the collision checks were really aggressive causing a spike in CPU usage. It was even recommended here in the forums to turn off I think the vertical collision checks (not sure which one). Does the new one have more efficient checks?
 
I did some benchmarking when initially creating it but haven't done any recently. In v3 you have more control over the number of casts so that will help with AI agents that are using a navmesh and don't need the gentle sliding across surfaces.
 
It looks awesome! Hope it is not too complicated to upgrade from V2 to V3 for my project ? Because I've done a lot of deep development based on V2.
 
Looks awesome! Will there be a demo of version 3 to try before we buy?
We will have a demo before the Asset Store release, but won't before the pre-release.

It looks awesome! Hope it is not too complicated to upgrade from V2 to V3 for my project ? Because I've done a lot of deep development based on V2.
A lot of the API is the same, though there are some changes. There is a migration tool that will update your character and items, though the item functionality will need to be setup again since we are now using the modular approach.
 
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