Adding a Player

In Torque3D we call the object that you are moving when you press keys the ControlObject and the Player is one instance of such a ControlObject. So, let's define a PlayerData datablock, place the following in the file data/CoinCollection/datablocks/player.tscript:

datablock PlayerData( CoinCollectorPlayer ) {
    // Third person shape
    ShapeAsset = "Prototyping:Playerbot_shape";

    // Set distance from camera to player
    cameraMaxDist = 3.0;
};

datablock this is very similar to a struct, basically in a datablock you define a set of default values which will get referenced by the spawned objects upon creation.

PlayerData( CoinCollectorPlayer ) here we state that we want to create a datablock of the type PlayerData, for creating new Players. We call this new datablock CoinCollectorPlayer .

ShapeAsset here it is a reference to the asset Playerbot_shapein the Prototyping module. But it could be set to any ShapeAsset in any module. We'll cover assets later in the tutorial.

cameraMaxDist defines the maximum distance from the Player shape to the Camera this will essentially allow us to zoom out a bit.

And we need to register this datablock, do this in the onCreateGameServer function in data/CoinCollection/CoinCollection.tscript:

function CoinCollection::onCreateGameServer(%this) {
    %this.registerDatablock("./datablocks/player.tscript");
}

We use the method registerDatablock because the coremodule has a lot of clever logic about loading/unloading/updating datablocks which we can't take advantage of if we just use the exec function.

Now we have a PlayerData that we can use, but in order to actually use it, we have to create a Player instance whenever a player enters the game. We do that in data/CoinCollection/server/gamemode.tscript, first let's create a helper method that creates the Player using the CoinCollectorPlayer datablock and assigns it as the client's Control Object:

function CoinCollectionGameMode::spawnControlObject(%this, %client) {
    // First spawn the actual Player object
    %player = spawnObject(Player, CoinCollectorPlayer);
    if (!isObject(%player)) {
        return;
    }
    MissionCleanup.add(%player);

    // Place it at the center of the world with a default rotation, 
    // this is a pretty simple "spawn placement"
    %spawnTransform = "0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0";
    %player.setTransform(%spawnTransform);
    
    // Couple the player to the client and set it as the control object
    %player.client = %client;
    %client.setControlObject(%player);
    %client.player = %player;

    // Tell the client that we expect it to be in third person
    %client.setFirstPerson(false);
}

Now that's just a helper method, in order to actually activate it we should call it from the onClientEnterGame function that we will add in that same file:

function CoinCollectionGameMode::onClientEnterGame(%this, %client) {
    // Set the player name based on the client's connection data
    %client.setPlayerName(%client.connectData);

    // Call the helper function
    %this.spawnControlObject(%client);
}

And let's make sure to delete the player object when they leave:

function CoinCollectionGameMode::onClientLeaveGame(%this, %client) {
    // Remove the player object
    %client.player.delete();
}

Now, run the level again and see that you can move around and jump with your newly created Player object!