CharacterController

The CharacterController owns the player’s movement: variant (which game shape it is), the polish constants (coyote time, jump buffer, air control), and the mechanic toggles (double jump, wall slide, wall jump, dash).

Open it from Inspector → Systems → CharacterController → Open.

Variants

Variant	Use when
platformer-2d	Side-scroller with gravity, jumps, ground / air handling. The Platformer bundle ships this.
topdown-2d	Top-down 8-directional movement, no gravity. The Top-down RPG bundle ships this.
third-person-3d	Third-person camera with relative movement and a chase cam.
first-person-3d	First-person pointer-locked camera. Future FPS bundle uses this.

Variant is sticky once chosen. Switching variants regenerates the controller source (the system gets re-scaffolded), so do it early in a project’s life before you’ve made lots of custom changes.

Tuning constants

The tuning section ships defaults pinned from real games. The hints in the editor name the reference game so you know what feel each default targets.

Key	Default	What it does	Reference
coyoteTimeMs	100	Grace after walking off a ledge where a jump still counts	Celeste, SMW
jumpBufferMs	100	Window before landing where a queued press fires	SMB1, Celeste
accelTimeSec	0.15	Time to reach max speed from 0	Between Hollow Knight and Celeste, snappy but not twitchy
decelTimeSec	0.10	Time to stop from max speed	Snappier than accel; release feels responsive without ice
maxFallSpeed	18	Terminal fall velocity	Clamp prevents tunneling through ground colliders
airControl	0.7	0..1 multiplier on accel while airborne	0.7 = some control without floatiness

Edit any value in the editor and the dev server hot-reloads. If you’re tuning game feel, this is the single fastest loop in Forge: tweak, save, jump, observe.

Mechanics

Toggles for optional moves. They’re off by default; flipping them on regenerates the controller to include the relevant logic.

Mechanic	What it does
Double jump	Extra mid-air jump (only available once between landings).
Wall slide	Slow fall against walls. Holding direction into wall slows descent.
Wall jump	Push off walls. Requires wall slide.
Dash	Short directional burst. Independent cooldown.
Sprint	Modifier key held boosts move speed (optional; surfaces only on platformer variant).

Why these defaults

The defaults aren’t arbitrary. They’re the same numbers the games most people would name as the platformer feel benchmarks use:

• Celeste’s 100ms coyote time and 100ms jump buffer are basically industry standard now.
• SMB1 popularized variable jump height (release-to-cut) which is wired by default.
• Hollow Knight’s snappy accel/decel curves match the Forge defaults closely.

If you’re making a side-scroller and these defaults feel weird, you almost certainly want to start by tuning rather than by replacing. The defaults work for ~80% of platformers; the variations are deliberate stylistic choices, not bug fixes.

Editing the config by hand

[systems.CharacterController.config]
variant = "platformer-2d"

  [systems.CharacterController.config.tuning]
  coyoteTimeMs = 100
  jumpBufferMs = 100
  accelTimeSec = 0.15
  decelTimeSec = 0.10
  maxFallSpeed = 18
  airControl = 0.7

  [systems.CharacterController.config.mechanics]
  doubleJump = false
  wallSlide = false
  wallJump = false
  dash = false
  sprint = true

The actual movement code lives in the source file the spine instantiates. The platformer bundle’s src/systems/character-controller-platformer.ts is the canonical reference; the topdown variant lives at src/systems/character-controller-topdown.ts.