Input axis for smooth movement in Unity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Input axis for smooth movement

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple game character that moves smoothly when the player presses arrow keys or WASD keys.

🎯 Goal: Build a Unity script that uses input axis to move a character smoothly in horizontal direction.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a float variable to store horizontal input

Create a float variable for movement speed

Use Input.GetAxis("Horizontal") to get smooth input

Move the character horizontally using the input and speed

Print the character's new position on each frame

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Smooth character movement is essential in many games to provide natural and responsive controls.

💼 Career

Understanding input axes and smooth movement is a fundamental skill for game developers working with Unity.

1

Create movement speed variable

Create a public float variable called speed and set it to 5f inside the PlayerMovement class.

Unity

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerMovement : MonoBehaviour
{
    // Create a public float variable called speed and set it to 5f
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Use public float speed = 5f; inside the class.

2

Get horizontal input axis

Inside the Update() method, create a float variable called horizontalInput and set it to Input.GetAxis("Horizontal").

Unity

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerMovement : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float speed = 5f;

    void Update()
    {
        // Create a float variable horizontalInput and assign Input.GetAxis("Horizontal")
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use float horizontalInput = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"); inside Update.

3

Move the character horizontally

Inside the Update() method, after getting horizontalInput, move the character by changing its position using transform.Translate() with horizontalInput * speed * Time.deltaTime on the x-axis.

Unity

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerMovement : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float speed = 5f;

    void Update()
    {
        float horizontalInput = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
        // Move the character horizontally using transform.Translate
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use transform.Translate(horizontalInput * speed * Time.deltaTime, 0, 0); to move smoothly.

4

Print the character's position

Inside the Update() method, after moving the character, add a Debug.Log() statement to print the character's current position using transform.position.

Unity

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerMovement : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float speed = 5f;

    void Update()
    {
        float horizontalInput = Input.GetAxis("Horizontal");
        transform.Translate(horizontalInput * speed * Time.deltaTime, 0, 0);
        // Print the current position of the character
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use Debug.Log("Position: " + transform.position); to print position.