Locking down rotation, so it wouldn't affect x,y (2D game dev)

2D
1

Hey guys,
Just started developing with Unity.

I’m creating a 2D top-down-view shooter. I have a player model, and I want him to be able to move in all directions.

The problem is that I had to choose between simple X,Y movement. And movement based on rotation (but then it’s like a car).

I want him to able to move via x,y. But that his texture would follow his vector angle (so that if he would let’s say go down at a 45 degree angle, the texture would look down there, and not always up).

With rotation that was automatic and very nice, but it’s very annoying for the gameplay.
And if I try to do rotation calculation by the changing x,y coordinates, it becomes a mess, because the x,y calculation is based on rotation aswell.

Anyway to kill the x,y calculation via rotation? So rotation would only be used for the texture? Or is there a smarter way to do this?
All the examples I find in 2D are mostly space shooters, and the ship always looks up, so I can’t find any relevant info. Sorry for the messy text, been codding for far too long today. If It’s completely rubbish I will re-write this later.

Thanks. Good night.

2

It sounds like what you want to do is have the visible player model not be the root object that’s getting moved around. So your hierarchy would look like this:

Player_Root
   Player_Model

And you apply the x,y motion to Player_Root, but the rotation to Player_Model.

3

What a great idea, thanks mate.

I guess I will have to read a little bit (or a whole lot), cause my player now is a Cube GameObject. I will need to check on how can I hide the cube, and get a model to lock to him.

I’m worried about collision detection, he’s gonna get shot. I didin’t read into that yet, but I guess I just can use the model’s script as a groundbase for character related stuff, and keep the Cube-Player script for movement only.
Because the problem is with C#, that even if the GameObject has a child, you still need to access it through GameObject and GetComponent, and if I will need to do it for the model to the Player (cube) all the time, I guess it will wreak havoc on the FPS.