Spawning objects based on distance traveled?

Archived Forums Questions & Answers
1

I’m trying to spawn tubular objects based on the distance my player object has traveled. Similar to how Flappy Bird places tubes in its game as the player moves in the x direction. I’ve created prefabs to Instantiate the tubes when needed. I’m calculating the distance my player has traveled with the following code. If I want to spawn such tubes, say for every 5 units my player moves in the x direction, how would I go about this? Could I use distanceTraveled % 5 and then Instantiate the objects based on that? Thanks.

float distanceTraveled = 0;
Vector3 lastPosition;
 
void Start()
{
  lastPosition = transform.position;
}
 
void Update()
{
  distanceTraveled += Vector3.Distance(transform.position, lastPosition);
  lastPosition = transform.position;
}

1 Answer

1
2

Making the following assumptions:

  • That, like the build-in cylinder, you are going to align the top and bottom of the game object with your two positions.
  • That you’ve authored the tube to be 1 world unit high.

Then here is code to position, scale, and rotate the object:

GameObject tube = Instantiate(tubePrefab);
Vector3 dir = transform.position - lastPosition;
tube.transform.position = lastPosition +  dir/ 2.0f;
tube.transform.localScale = new Vector3(tubeWidth, dir.magnitude, tubeDepth);
tube.transform.rotation = Quaternion.FromToRotation(Vector3.up, dir);

‘tubeWidth’ and ‘tubeHeight’ for most uses will be constants.