2D Mouse Point/Click Movement System + Quick Tutorial

Unity Engine
1

Hey guys, I have just started studying Unity and have been trying to find out as much as possible! I love the new 2D features, Well I have been trying to get a 2D Mouse Point/Click system to work. After searching online for a while I didn’t find any good example or tutorial on why or how you should do it, just different code examples that helped me get to this point.

I wanted to help explain this fully so that anyone who might read this could get a real good grasp of how this is working.

I would also like to note I have no idea if this is the proper way to do it by any means, or if there is a more efficient way of doing it, but I at least wanted to share this really quick and simple way of doing it for any newbies out there. This code is in C# if you need help with JS let me know.

Full Code:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class PlayerMovement : MonoBehaviour {
	
	public Vector3 targetPosition;
	
	// Update is called once per frame
	void Update () {

		if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Mouse0))
		   {
			targetPosition = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);
		}

		transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position, targetPosition, Time.deltaTime * 5);
	}
}

The most important part that I found out and kept giving me the slip up was this line

targetPosition = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);

Input.MousePosition returns the X/Y coordinates of what I believe to be the ViewPort Coordinates(So basically where your mouse position is within your monitor).

Your objects.Transform point system is related to the WorldPoint coordinate system which is entirely different.

So you would click on a position on the screen and the X/Y coordinates that returned would be (457,640), my player continually moved to the top right hand of the screen. When switching to the WorldPoint system, the coordinates of when you mouse click come back as the correct x/y/z position that your player needs to move correctly towards that position.

transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position, targetPosition, Time.deltaTime * 5);

This is the final part, there is many different ways of actually performing this step, but this I found to be the most simple. You simply just want to use the built in .MoveTowards method. This function does actually what it looks like it moves you to the targeted position that you give it, Simply provide the correct parameters and boom bada boom, your point click movement system is working.

This is a very short code example, but after the amount of time I spent on it I found it so stupid how little of code was actually needed, so I at least wanted to provide it to anyone who was looking or was wondering how to do it.

If you have any questions feel free to ask and leave any feedback for me, I am still very new to all of this and I would love constructive feedback as well!

Thanks guy.

  • Austin
10 Likes
2

Its nice when people actually provide the solution to a problem instead of just saying ‘I got it working now’

This little snippet of code could save others hours of searching.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to post this.

1 Like
3

Exactly the point of the post, if I could help someone out or save some time for someone by just posting this very simple fix to a annoying problem I ran into, the post was worth it. I appreciate the gratitude.

Cheers

1 Like
4

very helpful :slight_smile: but im trying to use this for a 2D game and the player keeps going through the wall, and since its a topdown game i cant use vector2 i guess
any idea how to make it move only in x and z direction?

5

Hi, while I couldn’t get your code to do what I wanted I found it a great starting point. I combined your ideas with a keyboard based movement tutorial and came up with the following code. The idea is that the player will move at a fixed speed (which can be different for both x y directions) and then stop once they reach the point you clicked. Just attach the script to the object in question and try it out.

Also it uses the physics system so that may help with collisions and what not.

Full Code:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Mouse_Control : MonoBehaviour {
	/// <summary>
	/// 1 - The speed of the ship
	/// </summary>
	public Vector2 speed = new Vector2(5f, 2f);

	//The position you clicked
	public Vector2 targetPosition;
	//That position relative to the players current position (what direction and how far did you click?)
	public Vector2 relativePosition;
	
	// 2 - Store the movement
	private Vector2 movement;
	
	void Update()
	{
		// 3 - Retrieve the mouse position
		if(Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.Mouse0))	
		{	
			targetPosition = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);
		}

		//4 - Find the relative poistion of the target based upon the current position 
		// Update each frame to account for any movement
		relativePosition = new Vector2(
			targetPosition.x - gameObject.transform.position.x,
			targetPosition.y - gameObject.transform.position.y );
	}
	
	void FixedUpdate()
	{
		// 5 - If you are about to overshoot the target, reduce velocity to that distance
        //      Else cap the Movement by a maximum speed per direction (x then y)
		if(	speed.x * Time.deltaTime >=  Mathf.Abs(relativePosition.x)) {
			movement.x = relativePosition.x;	
		} else{
			movement.x = speed.x * Mathf.Sign(relativePosition.x);
		}
		if(	speed.y * Time.deltaTime >=  Mathf.Abs(relativePosition.y) ) {
			movement.y = relativePosition.y;
		} else{
			movement.y = speed.y * Mathf.Sign(relativePosition.y);
		}

		// 6 - Move the game object using the physics engine
		rigidbody2D.velocity = movement;

	}
}

The tutorial in question was Create a player and its enemies — Pixelnest Studio

Hope this is useful to someone, the if statements took me a while to nail down due to not realising I had to compensate for delta time.

6 Likes
6

Thank you very much for this piece of code. It was exactly what I needed and saved me many more hours of searching and experimenting.

7

Thank you so much Batlad. I just want to ask
In the FixedUpdate function . What this line will do.
if( speed.x * Time.deltaTime >= Mathf.Abs(relativePosition.x))
Can you please explain.
Thank you so much in advance. Hope to get a reply soon.

8

Still five years later this post has been quite helpful, great! :wink:

1 Like
9

I know this an old thread, but I wanted to post this for other people who might come across it (as I did) looking for an answer. Keep in mind I am new to Unity so I have no clue if this a “correct” solution. But I believe that since you are in 2d you need Vector2 not Vector3. Vector2 gives 2 dimensions (x and y.) Vector3 gives 3 dimensions (x, y, and z.) I just changed the two instances of Vector3 to Vector2 and it worked! Thanks so much! I’ve been searching for an answer to this for the past two days and this post is the only one that actually got my script working.

10

Thank your for sharing.

11

I’d like to echo my appreciation

12

There is a glitch where whenever you move it the object disappears. can someone please find a way to fix it

13

oh changing it to vector 2 worked

14

thanksssss but how do you make it so that the player will avoid objects tagged as “obstacles” along the way?

15

Very useful indeed! :smile:

I’m sure this code was somewhere in the doc but I couldn’t find it.

16

Glad you find it useful but I’m going to close this thread from 2013 now.