Hi Guys,
Just wanted to share a more advanced solution that i added into my Virtuoso Life Reality game recently for displaying name tags over third person players.
The problem is not so trivial and usually requires some additional features to make it useful for proper game play like :
- Hiding name tags when the camera no longer views the player.
- Changing the color, font size of the name tag
- Keeping the name tag as part of the character prefab for better design
- Ensuring that the name tag does not flicker or jerk while the avatar is moving, jumping.
- Handling characters which change their capsule collider heights during playing different animations such as crouching.
- Automatic Offset Y handling of the name tag for different scene ratios and distances
- A simple approach to synchronizing name tags across a UNET network.
The code below accomplishes all this. Simply add it to your player prefab, assign the GUI Default Skin.
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.Networking;
namespace VGS.VLR.Core
{
public class VGS_VLRPlayerTag : NetworkBehaviour
{
[Header("Visual Settings")]
public GUISkin guiSkin;
public Color color = Color.white;
public int fontSize = 14;
[Header("Automatic Offset Y")]
public float maxCameraDistance = 8f; // Maximum camera distance
public float minCamDistanceOffsetY = 20f; // Minimum Offset Y applied when camera distance at minimum from player
public float maxCamDistanceOffsetY = -30f; // Maximum Offset Y applied when camera distance at maximum from player
private float offsetX = 0;
private float offsetY = 0;
private float boxW = 15f;
private Vector2 boxPosition;
private CapsuleCollider _playerCollider = null;
// On the server/host set the player Name
[SyncVar(hook = "OnPlayerName")]
public string playerName;
void Start()
{
_playerCollider = GetComponent<CapsuleCollider>();
}
/// <summary>
/// Sync handler for setting player name
/// </summary>
/// <param name="name"></param>
void OnPlayerName(string name)
{
playerName = name;
}
/// <summary>
/// Set the player name
/// </summary>
/// <param name="name"></param>
public void SetPlayerName(string name)
{
playerName = name;
}
/// <summary>
/// Main name tag rendering loop
/// </summary>
void OnGUI()
{
// Calculate the name tag position based on the height of the players capsule collider
Vector3 nameTagPosition = new Vector3(transform.position.x, transform.position.y + _playerCollider.height * 1.1f, transform.position.z);
// Calculate the world to viewport point in relation to the camera
Vector3 vpPos = Camera.main.WorldToViewportPoint(nameTagPosition);
// Only render when the camera see's the player on the view frustrum
if (vpPos.x > 0 && vpPos.x < 1 && vpPos.y > 0 && vpPos.y < 1 && vpPos.z > 0)
{
// Calculate name tag box position from world to screen coordinates
boxPosition = Camera.main.WorldToScreenPoint(nameTagPosition);
boxPosition.y = Screen.height - boxPosition.y;
boxPosition.x -= boxW;
// Dyanmic name tag size calculation
GUI.skin = guiSkin;
Vector2 content = guiSkin.box.CalcSize(new GUIContent(playerName));
guiSkin.box.fontSize = fontSize;
GUI.contentColor = color;
// Automatic Offset Y Calculation
float camDist = Vector3.Distance(Camera.main.transform.position, nameTagPosition);
offsetY = ScaleValueFloat(camDist, 0f, maxCameraDistance, minCamDistanceOffsetY, maxCamDistanceOffsetY);
// Center the position of the name tag
Rect rectPos = new Rect(boxPosition.x - content.x / 2 * offsetX, boxPosition.y + offsetY, content.x, content.y);
// Display the name tag
GUI.Box(rectPos, playerName);
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Scales one range of values to another range of values.
/// This function can handle inverted ScaleMin and ScaleMax as well.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="fValue"></param>
/// <param name="fInputMin"></param>
/// <param name="fInputMax"></param>
/// <param name="fScaleMin"></param>
/// <param name="fScaleMax"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
public float ScaleValueFloat(float fValue, float fInputMin, float fInputMax, float fScaleMin, float fScaleMax)
{
float fVal = 0;
//Inputs
float fInputRange = fInputMax - fInputMin;
//Scale
float fScaleRange = fScaleMax - fScaleMin;
//Rate Per Scale
float fRate = fScaleRange / fInputRange;
//Output
if (fValue < fInputMin)
{
fValue = fInputMin;
}
if (fValue > fInputMax)
{
fValue = fInputMax;
}
float fOut1 = (fValue - fInputMin) * fRate;
float fOut2 = fOut1 + fScaleMin;
fVal = fOut2;
return fVal;
}
}
}
