Twin Stick Shooter

Questions & Answers
1

I'm a casual Unity user and I'm starting a game project that will be at its base a twin stick shooter. If you're unfamiliar with the genre look at Geometry Wars and Beat Hazard, which are two good examples.

What I want to do though, is use a 360 controller and have the left stick move the player's avatar around the screen, and have the right stick just set the direction the player's avatar is looking (there won't be any shooting).

After looking around I'm fairly confident getting the left stick scripted should be fairly easy, but I have no idea on how to go about scripting the right stick. Any tutorials online, or examples anyone could point me two would be a huge help and greatly appreciated.

2

Not sure from memory if I've ever played a twin stick, but I assume from those two examples (which I never played) that it's something where you can move position with one stick and you can change direction with the other, such that orientation and movement are independent.

I would apply a script to the player's avatar that looks kind of like:

var moveSensitivity : float = 3.0;

function Update() {
    var lh : float = Input.GetAxis("LeftStickHorizontal");
    var lv : float = Input.GetAxis("LeftStickVertical");
    var rh : float = Input.GetAxis("RightStickHorizontal");
    var rv : float = Input.GetAxis("RightStickVertical");

    //Assumes you're looking down the z axis
    transform.position += Vector3(lh, lv, 0.0).normalized * moveSensitivity
                          * Time.deltaTime;

    //Assumes you're looking down the z axis and that you are looking down on the avatar
    transform.LookAt(transform.position + Vector3(rh, rv, 0.0), -Vector3.forward);
}

This moves you based on the left stick input and turns your avatar to always face the direction input by the right stick input.

If your look control is meant to be relative rotations rather than specific directions, then you would instead use something like:

//Don't need right vertical
//Assumes a variable for rotation sensitivity
transform.eulerAngles.z -= rh * rotateSensitivity * Time.deltaTime;