i am making a mario clone in my class and i keep getting this error (11,52): error CS0029: Cannot implicitly convert type `UnityEngine.Vector3' to `float'

Questions & Answers
1

if anyone can help me out would be appreciated, does it mean you can’t use a vector3 in this line of code? I wrote it out just like my teacher put it, but not sure why am getting the error - and of course I can’t move on with the assignment without fixing this error - I have rewritten it many times just in case I missed something - but still get the error code.

thanks in advance

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class Camerafollow : MonoBehaviour {

public Transform target;
public Transform leftBounds;
public Transform rightBounds;

public float smoothDampTime = 0.15f;
private float smoothDampVelocity = Vector3.zero;

private float camWidth, camHeight, levelMinX, levelMaxX;

// Use this for initialization
void Start () {

camHeight = Camera.main.orthographicSize * 2;
camWidth = camHeight * Camera.main.aspect;

float leftBoundsWidth = leftBounds.GetComponentInChildren ().bounds.size.x / 2;
float rightBoundsWidth = rightBounds.GetComponentInChildren ().bounds.size.x / 2;

levelMinX = leftBounds.position.x + leftBoundsWidth + (camWidth / 2);
levelMaxX = rightBounds.position.x - rightBoundsWidth - (camWidth / 2);

}

// Update is called once per frame
void Update () {

if (target) {

float targetX = Mathf.Max (levelMinX, Mathf.Min (levelMaxX,target.position.x));

float x = Mathf.SmoothDamp(transform.position.x, targetX, ref smoothDampVelocity, smoothDampTime);

transform.position = new Vector3(x, transform.position.y, transform.position.z);
}
}
}

2

Doesn’t that look weird to you :slight_smile: ? float x = Vector3.something

Ask yourself this: what do you expect the value of some float to become when you try to put a Vector3 (consisting of 3 floats) into it ? I guess ‘0’ in this case since the name of the Vector3 variable happens to be “zero”, but just as well you could be doing

private float smoothDampVelocity = new Vector3(-3, 6, 10);

What would the float value become then ? -3, 6 or 10 … or 10-3+6 ? And how could the compiler know ?

The compiler doesn’t know how to make 1 float out of the Vector3 you are trying to put into it.
If you want your float to be “0”, just do private float smoothDampVelocity = 0f; Otherwise you have to do some more coding to tell the compiler what number to store in your float variable every time you assign a Vector3 into it.

There are strict rules for what types pf data you can store in different types of variables and what types can be converted to other types

3

I appreciate you answering my question - am still very new to scripting, I will try what you suggest and hope it works -