CharacterInteractor

Character component that manages interaction raycasting, interactable detection, highlighting, and interaction triggering. Bridges the character's camera view to the Interaction System.

Definition

Namespace: Paragon.Townskeep.CharacterSystem Assembly: Townskeep.dll

[Serializable]
public class CharacterInteractor : CharacterComponent

Inheritance: ParagonComponent<Character> → CharacterComponent → CharacterInteractor

Remarks

CharacterInteractor is a serializable component attached to a Character that handles first-person interaction detection. Each tick, it performs a SphereCastNonAlloc from the character's camera position/direction and maintains a reference to the closest Interactable in view.

Key behaviors:

• Raycasting — Uses a sphere cast with 0.05 radius and configurable Range to detect interactables.

• Highlighting — Automatically highlights/unhighlights interactables when the character (possessed by a Player) looks at them.

• Interaction triggering — Delegates to the underlying Interactor component to start interactions with the viewed interactable.

• Arm rigs — Exposes LeftArmRig and RightArmRig for animation IK during interactions.

Quick Lookup

Goal	How
Try to interact with what's in view	characterInteractor.TryInteractInView(trigger)
Cancel current interaction	characterInteractor.CancelInteraction()
Get the underlying Interactor	characterInteractor.Interactor
Get active interactions	characterInteractor.ActiveInteractions
Check if player-controlled	characterInteractor.HasInputControl()

Properties

Interactor

The underlying Interactor instance that manages active interactions.

public Interactor Interactor { get; }

ActiveInteractions

All currently active interactions on this character's interactor. Returns null if the interactor is not initialized.

public IEnumerable<Interaction> ActiveInteractions { get; }

Fields

Field	Type	Description
LeftArmRig	ArmRig	Left arm IK rig for interaction animations
RightArmRig	ArmRig	Right arm IK rig for interaction animations
Range	float	Maximum raycast distance for detecting interactables

Methods

TryInteractInView

Attempts to interact with the interactable currently in the character's view.

public void TryInteractInView(InteractionTrigger trigger)

Parameter	Type	Description
trigger	InteractionTrigger	The interaction trigger type (e.g., press, hold)

Does nothing if no interactable is currently in view. On success, unhighlights the interactable if the character is player-possessed.

CancelInteraction

Cancels the first active interaction on this character.

public void CancelInteraction()

HasInputControl

Returns whether this character is currently possessed by a Player.

public bool HasInputControl()

Returns: true if the character is player-possessed.

Lifecycle

Phase	Behavior
OnInitialize()	Allocates raycast hit buffer (size 5), initializes the Interactor with the character's GameObject
Tick(dt)	Performs sphere cast, updates interactable-in-view tracking and highlighting
OnDestroy()	Cancels any active interaction

Common Pitfalls

Raycast buffer size is fixed at 5 — Only the 5 closest hits are considered. Dense scenes with many interactables at close range may miss some.

Highlighting is player-only — Highlighting logic only runs when Character.IsPossessedBy<Player>() returns true. NPC characters do not trigger highlights.

Interactable priority is distance-weighted — The "closest" interactable is determined by a dot-product distance metric relative to camera direction, not raw Euclidean distance.

See Also

• CharacterInventory — inventory system that triggers carry interactions via this interactor

• Interactor / Interactable — core interaction system