Top Down Character Movement

Unity Engine
1

Hey guys!
I’m working on a game similiar to the old “champions of” series.
My problem is that I cant seem to find a way to move my character and rotate it according to it’s movement direction.
Like when I press the A key it should walk left and look forward instead of walking sidewards like it’s the case in most FPS games.

Note:This is not a movement problem, it’s a rotation problem since I’m able to let the character walk in the desired way.
The only problem is that I cant find a way to make the character always look forward(In its movement direction).

2

When you work out which way to move, also work out which angle to face at the same time. E.g. when you press the A key, you’re moving the player left, you can set targetDir = 180 at the same time.

Then you can either just rotate immediately to that angle, or use Mathf.MoveTowardAngle to smoothly turn over several frames.

3 
enum Direction {
       Up,
       Right,
       Down,
       Left
}

Direction currentDirection;

void Awake()
{
           currentDirection = Direction.Up;
}
void Update()
{
            float horiz = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
            float vert = Input.GetAxis("Vertical");
           
            Rotate(horiz,vert);
            Move(horiz,vert);
}

Rotate(float horiz, float vert)
{
                 if (horiz < 0 )
                        SetDirection(Direction.Left);
                 if (horiz > 0)
                          SetDirection(Direction.Right);
                 if (vert < 0)
                          SetDirection(Direction.Down);
                  if (vert > 0)
                          SetDirection(Direction.Up);
}

void SetDirection(Direction targetDirection)
{
           if (currentDirection == targetDirection)
                   return;
            currentDirection = targetDirection;
            switch (currentDirection)
            {
                      case Direction.Up:
                              transform.rotation = new Vector3(0,0,0);
                              break;
                      case Direction.Left:
                              transform.rotation = new Vector3(0,-90,0);
                              break;
                     case Direction.Right:
                              transform.rotation = new Vector3(0,90,0);
                              break;
                      case Direction.Down:
                              transform.rotation = new Vector3(0,180,0);
                              break;
               }
}
1 Like
4

if you just want to snap to it without any animation/timedelay/lerping you could just do

transform.forward = movementDirection; // assuming you have a vector3 from the movement code
1 Like
5

@LeftyRight: Won’t that just move the character forward in the direction he’s facing? The OP stated he knew how to move character… he just was looking for a way to rotate the character to the left if he started walking left. So it woudln’t look like the character was strafing.