Unity Game Developer for Third Person Character Controller -- 2
Budget: $250 – $750 USD
Summary
Please provide fixed priced estimate for initial delivery of the below. Feel free to break it out into chunks and quote those.
We’re building a modern, mod-first co‑op stealth shooter heavily inspired by **Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory**. We need a **Unity character controller specialist** to help us finish and polish our third-person player controller: movement, traversal, ADS, and weapon handling.
You’ll be working on a **kinematic CharacterController-based** setup using **UnityHFSM**, **FinalIK**, and **Cinemachine 3**. The core systems and architecture are in place; the focus for this contract is **feel, traversal features, and animation/IK polish**, not building everything from scratch.
If you haven't played Chaos Theory on PC, it has a 5 speed tier movement system. Instead of pressing a button to sprint, you use the scroll wheel to speed up/slow down.
### What you’ll work on
- Tune and finalize our **5-tier movement speed system** (standing + crouching). This is already functioning, just need the speeds/animation polished a bit to feel better.
- Refine jump and fall feel (takeoff, apex, landing, buffering, coyote-style behavior)
- Implement & polish **ADS movement and shoulder switching** using Cinemachine 3.x (mostly functional but buggy)
- Implement and/or refine **weapon equipping** for pistol and rifle:
- Currently no plan to have a non-ads state. If weapon is equipped you are ADS. (this is mostly working)
- Weapon-specific grip/pose setup so hands don’t clip and new weapons are easy to add
- Add a contextual prone (players can't go prone but the interact button allows them to enter ducts, etc)
- Add and polish **core traversal states**:
- Authoring ledges that can be grabbed
- Jump and grab / hang onto ledges
- Shimmy side-to-side on a ledge and climb up / drop down
- Climb up a vertical pipe; jump and grab onto a horizontal overhead pipe
- Hang from pipe, pull legs up to the pipe, ADS upside-down from pipe, and drop/climb out cleanly
- Implement data- and event-driven **weapon switching**:
- Tap Ctrl to cycle weapons, hold for on-screen weapon selection UI (you won’t build the full UI, but you’ll expose the hooks)
- Ensure all of the above plays nicely with our **stealth and animation systems** (no cover system, no auto-parkour, no universal prone)
### Requirements
- Familiarity with Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. It will be hard to get this right without some experience playing or watching it
- Strong experience shipping **third-person character controllers** in Unity using **CharacterController** (not just root-motion controllers)
- Hands-on work with **Cinemachine 3.x** ThirdPersonFollow rigs (hip vs ADS, shoulder swapping)
- Solid understanding of **UnityHFSM-style FSMs** or comparable code-based hierarchical state machines
- Proven **FinalIK** integration experience (aim IK, weapon grips, foot grounding, hanging/climbing poses)
- Comfortable designing **data-driven controllers** using ScriptableObjects (movement, camera, weapon configs)
- Good instincts for **“feel”**: acceleration, deceleration, analog speed scaling, responsive but fair jump behavior
### Nice to Have
- Experience with **stealth-focused** games and precise movement (Chaos Theory, Thief, Hitman, etc.)
- Experience on mod-friendly projects (exposing systems via config assets / events, not hard-wired logic)
- Networking awareness (we will be using **FishNet**, server-authoritative for stealth, owner-authoritative for movement)
### Available items
We're mainly just greyboxing / working towards getting a low fidelity vertical slice. I have a bunch of asset store animations, weapons, sounds, fx, etc that can be used if needed.
If this sounds like your kind of problem, share **examples of controllers you’ve built** (videos + a quick breakdown of your implementation choices). Right now just looking for these systems but will need additional help in the future if we find that we're a good fit.
Please provide fixed priced estimate for initial delivery of the below. Feel free to break it out into chunks and quote those.
We’re building a modern, mod-first co‑op stealth shooter heavily inspired by **Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory**. We need a **Unity character controller specialist** to help us finish and polish our third-person player controller: movement, traversal, ADS, and weapon handling.
You’ll be working on a **kinematic CharacterController-based** setup using **UnityHFSM**, **FinalIK**, and **Cinemachine 3**. The core systems and architecture are in place; the focus for this contract is **feel, traversal features, and animation/IK polish**, not building everything from scratch.
If you haven't played Chaos Theory on PC, it has a 5 speed tier movement system. Instead of pressing a button to sprint, you use the scroll wheel to speed up/slow down.
### What you’ll work on
- Tune and finalize our **5-tier movement speed system** (standing + crouching). This is already functioning, just need the speeds/animation polished a bit to feel better.
- Refine jump and fall feel (takeoff, apex, landing, buffering, coyote-style behavior)
- Implement & polish **ADS movement and shoulder switching** using Cinemachine 3.x (mostly functional but buggy)
- Implement and/or refine **weapon equipping** for pistol and rifle:
- Currently no plan to have a non-ads state. If weapon is equipped you are ADS. (this is mostly working)
- Weapon-specific grip/pose setup so hands don’t clip and new weapons are easy to add
- Add a contextual prone (players can't go prone but the interact button allows them to enter ducts, etc)
- Add and polish **core traversal states**:
- Authoring ledges that can be grabbed
- Jump and grab / hang onto ledges
- Shimmy side-to-side on a ledge and climb up / drop down
- Climb up a vertical pipe; jump and grab onto a horizontal overhead pipe
- Hang from pipe, pull legs up to the pipe, ADS upside-down from pipe, and drop/climb out cleanly
- Implement data- and event-driven **weapon switching**:
- Tap Ctrl to cycle weapons, hold for on-screen weapon selection UI (you won’t build the full UI, but you’ll expose the hooks)
- Ensure all of the above plays nicely with our **stealth and animation systems** (no cover system, no auto-parkour, no universal prone)
### Requirements
- Familiarity with Splinter Cell Chaos Theory. It will be hard to get this right without some experience playing or watching it
- Strong experience shipping **third-person character controllers** in Unity using **CharacterController** (not just root-motion controllers)
- Hands-on work with **Cinemachine 3.x** ThirdPersonFollow rigs (hip vs ADS, shoulder swapping)
- Solid understanding of **UnityHFSM-style FSMs** or comparable code-based hierarchical state machines
- Proven **FinalIK** integration experience (aim IK, weapon grips, foot grounding, hanging/climbing poses)
- Comfortable designing **data-driven controllers** using ScriptableObjects (movement, camera, weapon configs)
- Good instincts for **“feel”**: acceleration, deceleration, analog speed scaling, responsive but fair jump behavior
### Nice to Have
- Experience with **stealth-focused** games and precise movement (Chaos Theory, Thief, Hitman, etc.)
- Experience on mod-friendly projects (exposing systems via config assets / events, not hard-wired logic)
- Networking awareness (we will be using **FishNet**, server-authoritative for stealth, owner-authoritative for movement)
### Available items
We're mainly just greyboxing / working towards getting a low fidelity vertical slice. I have a bunch of asset store animations, weapons, sounds, fx, etc that can be used if needed.
If this sounds like your kind of problem, share **examples of controllers you’ve built** (videos + a quick breakdown of your implementation choices). Right now just looking for these systems but will need additional help in the future if we find that we're a good fit.