How can you move a camera a set amount of units based on the player's x position in a 2d game?

Question

Hi, I am still new to unity so sorry is this sounds like a stupid question.

I am trying to make a 2d game where if the player is inside the camera, the camera is still, however once the player moves to the edge of the camera, the camera move a set amount of units towards the edge that the player is at. However, I am currently encountering some errors. The script that I made goes as follows:

using System.Collections; using System.Collections.Generic; using UnityEngine;

public class CameraMovement : MonoBehaviour {

 public GameObject Player;
 public GameObject Camera;
 //Half camera size is 12 units
 public int Halfcamera = 12;
 //how much the camera moves
 public int CameraMove = 22;
 
 void Start()
 {
     
 }

 // Update is called once per frame
 void Update()
 {
     if (Player.tranform.position.x > (Camera.transform.position.x + Halfcamera))
     {
         Camera + CameraMove;
     }
     else if (Player.transform.position.x < (Camera.transform.position.x - Halfcamera))
     {
         Camera - CameraMove;
     }
 }

}

If there is something wrong that I am doing then please inform me, any help is appreciated.,

Answer 1

You should be careful in what you name your variables, Camera is already used by a Class; The convention is that variable names start with a lowercase and Class names start with Uppercase. Another error you are getting is that you can not add the camera (GameObject) and a number (int) together; You need to access the position of the camera through it's transform (transform.position) and convert the number into a Vector3 to match the position's type.

The camera can be access through it's class (Camera.main) instead of making a variable for it. The camera can convert the player's world position into something easier to manage with the camera, in this case we can convert it to a viewport point (WorldToViewportPoint()). You can think of the viewport in terms of percentage of the screen (0 to 1); so if the converted player's position is less than 0 or if it is greater than 1, he is off screen.

Here is a way you could do it:

 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using UnityEngine;
 
 public class CameraMovement : MonoBehaviour
 {
     public GameObject player;
     public int cameraMoveAmount = 22;
 
     void Update()
     {
         // convert player position to a viewport point
         var playerViewportPosition = Camera.main.WorldToViewportPoint(player.transform.position);
 
         // is the player offscreen to the right?
         if (playerViewportPosition.x > 1f) {
             Camera.main.transform.position += Vector3.right * cameraMoveAmount; // move right by move amount
         }
         // is the player offscreen to the left?
         else if (playerViewportPosition.x < 0f) {
             Camera.main.transform.position += Vector3.left * cameraMoveAmount; // move left by move amount
         }
 
     }
 }

How can you move a camera a set amount of units based on the player's x position in a 2d game?

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