Standard inputs for quick scripting

Unity Engine
1

Hi Guys,
Total disclosure - I am new to Unity.
That said - I have been learning scripting by smashing together quick experiments to learn and test concepts.
It seems in the “old world” you could create a brand new project, do nothing special, open a script, type OnMouseDown and Unity would be listening for a mousedown to do whatever I put in that method (Say - a simple Debug).
Similar for KeyDown or even Input.MousePosition.
Can jump in, a shoot a ray with 3 lines of code in an update method.
This makes it SUPER easy to get something working quickly.

Does the new Input System have this type of quick win or do all inputs need to be previously defined in the input manager and then enabled in each class and/or assigned as a “PlayerInput” (even though sometimes it has nothing to do with a “player”?
And follow on:
If not - what is an example to read mouseposition (for example).
If so - is there a generic inputs map that contains ALL the keys and mouse inputs so we can just toss that in to get the functionality described above with minimal setup time?

I guess my question is…
What is the fastest(least setup time) way to go from opening a new project to me being able to have an object follow my mousepostion and watch for mousedown to smash together test scripts? :slight_smile:

2

There is a zero-setup path for reading device input directly but not yet for actions.

void Update()
{
    // Read mouse position.
    var pos = Mouse.current.position.ReadValue();
}
  • Add PlayerInput
  • Click “Create Actions…” and hit enter.

This will set up a PlayerInput with “Send Messages” behavior and a default set of actions (similar to what the old input manager has) that you can customize. You can respond to the action messages with OnXXX methods (with XXX being the action names).

3

Thanks! Is is super helpful!