How to rotate a character facing direction of movement like sonic the hedgehog

Hey guys, my title pretty much sums it up. I’ve been stuck on this forever now. I keep breaking and coming back to it but I really want to solve this. Hopefully someone can help me out. I want to consistently rotate my character like a constant forward roll in his direction of movement, just like in sonic the hedgehog. I’ve got his direction of movement working right and his roll movement working but I can’t for the life of me figure out how to have him face his move direction while he rolls forward. Obviously I can’t use transform.LookAt because he’s consistently rolling and his LookAt point will change constantly. Here is what I’ve got… any ideas?

    #pragma strict
var rotateSpeed: float = 60;
private var lastPos: Vector3;

function Update(){
var moveDirection = new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"),0,0); 
var dist = transform.position - lastPos;
lastPos = transform.position;
var angle = dist.x * rotateSpeed;


if(moveDirection.x > 0){
print("moving right");
transform.Rotate(angle, 0, 0);
}
if(moveDirection.x < 0){
print("moving left");
transform.Rotate(-angle, 0, 0);
}
}

Maybe make him the child of an empty gameobject, and then the character can rotate and stuff in local space, while the parent defines the facing direction.

lttldude9 you made my night. I can’t believe the solution was so simple. I still gotta tweak some stuff but yup this totally works.

feel free to post an answer and ill +thumb up it