How to pause and resume the game?

I prefer to use

 Time.timeScale = 0;

By setting the timeScaling factor to 0, you basically pause your game, since everything time-based will be stopped. Effectively, it results in Time.deltaTime to be constantly 0, and FixedUpdate is not called anymore. (Update and LateUpdate will still be called). If you want to have animations during pause, you have two possibilities:

• Use an animator component with Update Mode: Unscaled Time.

• If the animations are done through code (like rotation, simple movement or fading) you can use Time.unscaledDeltaTime. Like the name says, this is the unscaled delta value, and thus the same as deltaTime for timeScale = 1.

If you don't use a physics or time based game, you don't need to do anything in special. If your game is purely UI based, you can open a pause panel on click on the pause button. If the pause panel fills out the entire screen (can also be transparent, if you don't want it to look like that), it blocks every underlying UI input, and your game is effectively paused.

i was going to ask the same ques but because it is asked here i might as say it here.

i am facing problems to pause/resume my game as well. i am following lynda's unity 3.5 essential training. they did it with the function Input.ResetInputAxes();. but when i do the same movement of my mouse in game in X-axis freezes, but it doesn't do the same for Y-axis as shown in the tutorial :/

To freeze the objects in the game i used Time.timeScale = 0;

here is my code in game manager script --- #pragma strict

 var totalScore : int = 0;
 var temp : int = 0;
 var higestDistance = 0;
 var scoreInfoVariable : GUIText;
 
 var fpc :GameObject;
 internal var showMenu : boolean = false;
 
 var platform06 : GameObject;
 
 function Start () {
     Screen.showCursor = false;
 }
 
 function Update () {
     if (Input.GetKeyDown ("escape")){
         if (Screen.showCursor == false) {
             fpc.SendMessage("ToggleInputCursor", true);
             Screen.showCursor = true;
             showMenu = true;
             Time.timeScale = 0;
         }
         else {
             ResumeGame();
         }
     }
 }
 
 function UpdateScoreInfoGUI( distance : int) {
     totalScore = totalScore + distance;
     scoreInfoVariable.text = ""+ totalScore;
 }
 
 function ActivatePlatformPrefab06(){
     platform06.active = true;
     print("message is received");
 }
 
 function OnGUI(){
     if(showMenu == true)
     {
         GUI.BeginGroup(Rect(Screen.width/2 - 50, Screen.height/2 - 50, 100, 90));
         
         GUI.Box(Rect(0, 0, 100, 90), "Menu");
         if(GUI.Button(Rect(10, 30, 80, 20), "Resume")){
             print("you clicked  RESUME");
             ResumeGame();
         }
         if(GUI.Button(Rect(10, 60, 80, 20), "Quit")){
             print("you clicked  QUIT");
             Application.Quit();
         }
         
         GUI.EndGroup();
     }
 } 
 
 function ResumeGame(){
             Screen.showCursor = false;
             fpc.SendMessage("ToggleInputCursor", false);
             showMenu = false;
             Time.timeScale = 1.0;
 }

here is my code in First Person Controller script, my changes are shown with comments --- private var motor : CharacterMotor;

 internal var noInput : boolean;
 
 // Use this for initialization
 function Awake () {
     motor = GetComponent(CharacterMotor);
 }
 
 // Update is called once per frame
 function Update () {
 
     // -------------- my manual code-----------------
     if(noInput==true){ 
         Input.ResetInputAxes();
     }
     // -------------- my manual code-----------------
     
     
     // Get the input vector from kayboard or analog stick
     var directionVector = new Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal"), 0, Input.GetAxis("Vertical"));
     
     if (directionVector != Vector3.zero) {
         // Get the length of the directon vector and then normalize it
         // Dividing by the length is cheaper than normalizing when we already have the length anyway
         var directionLength = directionVector.magnitude;
         directionVector = directionVector / directionLength;
         
         // Make sure the length is no bigger than 1
         directionLength = Mathf.Min(1, directionLength);
         
         // Make the input vector more sensitive towards the extremes and less sensitive in the middle
         // This makes it easier to control slow speeds when using analog sticks
         directionLength = directionLength * directionLength;
         
         // Multiply the normalized direction vector by the modified length
         directionVector = directionVector * directionLength;
     }
     
     // Apply the direction to the CharacterMotor
     motor.inputMoveDirection = transform.rotation * directionVector;
     motor.inputJump = Input.GetButton("Jump");
 }
 
 // -------------- my manual code-----------------
 
 function ToggleInputCursor(state : boolean){
     noInput = state;
     print("message is received :"+noInput);
 }
 
 // -------------- my manual code-----------------
 
 // Require a character controller to be attached to the same game object
 @script RequireComponent (CharacterMotor)
 @script AddComponentMenu ("Character/FPS Input Controller")