New Input System overview in Unity - Mini Project: Build & Apply

New Input System overview

📖 Scenario: You are creating a simple Unity project to understand how the New Input System works. This system helps your game detect player actions like moving or jumping in a clean and flexible way.

🎯 Goal: Build a basic Unity script that sets up the New Input System to read player movement input and print the movement direction.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an InputAction asset with a 'Move' action

Set up a Vector2 variable to store movement input

Write a method to read the 'Move' input value

Print the movement input direction when it changes

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Game developers use the New Input System in Unity to handle player controls cleanly and support multiple devices like keyboard, gamepad, and touch.

💼 Career

Understanding the New Input System is essential for Unity game developers to create responsive and flexible player input handling.

1

Create InputAction asset with 'Move' action

Create an InputAction asset called playerInputActions with a Move action of type Value and control type Vector2.

Unity

// Create InputAction asset named playerInputActions with Move action
// Your code here

Need a hint?

Use Unity's InputAction class to define a 'Move' action with type Value and Vector2 control.

2

Add Vector2 variable to store movement input

Add a Vector2 variable called movementInput to store the player's movement direction.

Unity

// InputAction asset named playerInputActions with Move action of type Value and control type Vector2
// This is usually created in the Unity Editor, but here is a code representation
using UnityEngine.InputSystem;

public class PlayerInputActions : IInputActionCollection
{
    public InputAction Move;

    public PlayerInputActions()
    {
        Move = new InputAction("Move", InputActionType.Value, "/leftStick");
    }

    public void Enable() => Move.Enable();
    public void Disable() => Move.Disable();
}

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerController : MonoBehaviour
{
    // Add a Vector2 variable called movementInput
    // Your code here
}

Need a hint?

Declare a public Vector2 variable named movementInput inside the PlayerController class.

3

Read 'Move' input value in Update method

In the PlayerController class, write an Update() method that reads the Move action's current value into movementInput using ReadValue<Vector2>().

Unity

// InputAction asset named playerInputActions with Move action of type Value and control type Vector2
// This is usually created in the Unity Editor, but here is a code representation
using UnityEngine.InputSystem;

public class PlayerInputActions : IInputActionCollection
{
    public InputAction Move;

    public PlayerInputActions()
    {
        Move = new InputAction("Move", InputActionType.Value, "/leftStick");
    }

    public void Enable() => Move.Enable();
    public void Disable() => Move.Disable();
}

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerController : MonoBehaviour
{
    public Vector2 movementInput;

    void Update()
    {
        // Read the Move input value into movementInput
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Inside Update(), assign movementInput by calling playerInputActions.Move.ReadValue<Vector2>()

4

Print movement direction when input changes

Add a Debug.Log statement inside Update() to print the current movementInput value whenever it changes.

Unity

// InputAction asset named playerInputActions with Move action of type Value and control type Vector2
// This is usually created in the Unity Editor, but here is a code representation
using UnityEngine.InputSystem;

public class PlayerInputActions : IInputActionCollection
{
    public InputAction Move;

    public PlayerInputActions()
    {
        Move = new InputAction("Move", InputActionType.Value, "/leftStick");
    }

    public void Enable() => Move.Enable();
    public void Disable() => Move.Disable();
}

using UnityEngine;

public class PlayerController : MonoBehaviour
{
    public Vector2 movementInput;

    void Update()
    {
        movementInput = playerInputActions.Move.ReadValue();
        // Print movementInput value
        // Your code here
    }
}

Need a hint?

Use Debug.Log to print the movementInput value inside Update().