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Unity 2021 Cookbook

You're reading from   Unity 2021 Cookbook Over 140 recipes to take your Unity game development skills to the next level

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Product type Paperback
Published in Sep 2021
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781839217616
Length 816 pages
Edition 4th Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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Shaun Ferns Shaun Ferns
Author Profile Icon Shaun Ferns
Shaun Ferns
Matt Smith Matt Smith
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Matt Smith
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Toc

Table of Contents (15) Chapters Close

1. Displaying Data with Core UI Elements 2. Responding to User Events for Interactive UIs FREE CHAPTER 3. Inventory and Advanced UIs 4. Playing and Manipulating Sounds 5. Creating 3D Objects, Terrains, Textures, and Materials 6. 2D Animation and Physics 7. Characters, Game Kits, and Starter Assets 8. Web Server Communication and Online Version Control 9. Controlling and Choosing Positions 10. Navigation Meshes and Agents 11. Cameras and Rendering Pipelines 12. Shader Graphs and Video Players 13. Advanced Topics - Gizmos, Automated Testing, and More 14. Particle Systems and Other Visual Effects 15. Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR)

The NormalizedPosition(...) method

The NormalizedPosition(...) method inputs the player's character position and the target GameObject's position. It has the goal of outputting the relative position of the target to the player, returning a Vector3 object (actually, a C# struct – but we can think of it as a simple object) with a triplet of X, Y, and Z values. Note that since the radar is only 2D, we ignore the Y-value of the target GameObjects, so the Y-value of the Vector3 object that's returned by this method will always be 0. So, for example, if a target was at exactly the same location as the player, the X, Y, and Z of the returned Vector3 object would be (0, 0, 0).

Since we know that the target GameObject is no further from the player's character than insideRadarDistance, we can calculate a value in the -1 ... 0 ... +1 range for the X and Z axes by finding the distance on each axis from the target to the player, and then dividing it by insideRadarDistance. An X-value of -1 means that the target is fully to the left of the player (at a distance that is equal to insideRadarDistance), while +1 means it is fully to the right. A value of 0 means that the target has the same X position as the player's character. Likewise, for -1 ... 0 ... +1 values in the Z-axis (this axis represents how far, in front or behind us, an object is located, which will be mapped to the vertical axis in our radar).

Finally, this method constructs and returns a new Vector3 object with the calculated X and Z normalized values and a Y-value of zero.

The normalized position

The normalized value is one that has been simplified in some way so that its context has been abstracted away. In this recipe, what we are interested in is where an object is relative to the player. So, our normal form is to get a value of the X and Z position of a target in the -1 to +1 range for each axis. Since we are only considering the GameObjects within our insideRadarDistance value, we can map these normalized target positions directly onto the location of the radar image in our UI.

You have been reading a chapter from
Unity 2021 Cookbook - Fourth Edition
Published in: Sep 2021
Publisher: Packt
ISBN-13: 9781839217616
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