How do I make my enemy have animations for directions during movemvent

Question

I’m new to programming and still learning C# as I go. So, I was following a youtube series on making a 2D RPG top down-ish game. The player has movement in every direction with direction specific animations, as I want. As it got to making the enemy, the YouTuber’s enemy doesn’t have any direction specific animations and that’s now how my enemy is. Can I get help being lead in the right direction here? I have animations going up, down, left, and right. I have my animations made but need help with the script here. Also if someone can help adjust it for me so that the enemy only moves up down left and right instead of diagonally that would be great and much appreciated! (So over all, I want the enemy to be like the player with animations, but randomized movement and no player control) Here’s the current script.

 using System.Collections;
 using System.Collections.Generic;
 using UnityEngine;
 
 public class AnimalMovement : MonoBehaviour {
 
     private Animator anim;
     public float moveSpeed;
     private Rigidbody2D myRigidbody;
     private bool moving;
     public float timeBetweenMove;
     private float timeBetweenMoveCounter;
     public float timeToMove;
     private float timeToMoveCounter;
     private Vector3 moveDirection;
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Start () {
         anim = GetComponent<Animator> ();
         myRigidbody = GetComponent<Rigidbody2D> ();
         timeBetweenMoveCounter = timeBetweenMove;
         timeToMoveCounter = timeToMove;
     }
     
     // Update is called once per frame
     void Update () {
         if (moving)
         {
             timeToMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
             myRigidbody.velocity = moveDirection;
 
             if (timeToMoveCounter < 0f)
             {
                 moving = false;
                 timeBetweenMoveCounter = timeBetweenMove;
             }
         }
         else
         {
             timeBetweenMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
             myRigidbody.velocity = Vector2.zero;
 
             if (timeBetweenMoveCounter < 0f)
             {
                 moving = true;
                 timeToMoveCounter = timeToMove;
 
                 moveDirection = new Vector3(Random.Range(-1f, 1f) * moveSpeed, Random.Range(-1f, 1f) * moveSpeed, 0f);
             }
         }
     }
 }

Answer 1

If you followed a youtube tutorial, I suppose you are using blend trees for this kind of animations (if not, I highly sugest using one for the enemy animation controller). You need to create a blend tree for Idle animations and another one for Walking aniamtions. The transition between them will be managed by a boolean "isWalking". Make the blend trees 2D cartesian and go from 0 to 1/-1 in each axis.

So when it's time to move, you only need to change this parameters accordingly. The "move" part of the update function would be like this:

 if (moving)
          {
              timeToMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
              myRigidbody.velocity = moveDirection;
 
              anim.SetBool("isWalking", true);
              anim.SetFloat("xMov", moveDirection.normalized.x);
              anim.SetFloat("yMov", moveDirection.normalized.y);
  
              if (timeToMoveCounter < 0f)
              {
                  moving = false;
                  anim.SetBool("isWalking", false);
                  timeBetweenMoveCounter = timeBetweenMove;
              }
          }

If you need help seting up the blend trees let me know.

Edit: The page wouldn't let me post a comment and this is basically part 2 of the answer so here it goes: Here's your update function to only allow movement in one axis (only one direction each time they start moving).

  void Update()
     {
         if (moving)
         {
             timeToMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
             myRigidbody.velocity = moveDirection;
 
             anim.SetBool("isWalking", true);
             anim.SetFloat("xMov", moveDirection.normalized.x);
             anim.SetFloat("yMov", moveDirection.normalized.y);
 
             if (timeToMoveCounter < 0f)
             {
                 moving = false;
                 anim.SetBool("isWalking", false);
                 timeBetweenMoveCounter = timeBetweenMove;
             }
         }
         else
         {
             timeBetweenMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
             myRigidbody.velocity = Vector2.zero;
 
             if (timeBetweenMoveCounter < 0f)
             {
                 moving = true;
                 timeToMoveCounter = timeToMove;
 
                 if (Random.value >= 0.5f) //random boolean
                 {
                     moveDirection = new Vector3(Random.Range(-1f, 1f) * moveSpeed, 0f, 0f);
                 }
                 else
                 {
                     moveDirection = new Vector3(0, Random.Range(-1f, 1f) * moveSpeed, 0f);
                 }
             }
         }
     }

However, if you want them to move to a point which would require diagonal movement, but executing first the movement in one axis and after that the other one, your Update would be this one (I defined a new float called axisChangeTime and a new bool called verticalGoesFirst). This is probably what you want:

  private float axisChangeTime;
  private bool verticalGoesFirst;
   
  void Update () {
          if (moving)
          {
              timeToMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
              axisChangeTime -= Time.deltaTime;

             anim.SetBool("isWalking", true);
             anim.SetFloat("xMov", moveDirection.normalized.x);
             anim.SetFloat("yMov", moveDirection.normalized.y);

              if (verticalGoesFirst)
              {
                  myRigidbody.velocity = moveDirection.y;
              }
              else
              {
                  myRigidbody.velocity = moveDirection.x;
              }
 
              if (axisChangeTime <= 0f)
              {
                 verticalGoesFirst = !verticalGoesFirst;
              }
  
              if (timeToMoveCounter < 0f)
              {
                  moving = false;
                  anim.SetBool("isWalking", false);
                  timeBetweenMoveCounter = timeBetweenMove;
              }
          }
          else
          {
              timeBetweenMoveCounter -= Time.deltaTime;
              myRigidbody.velocity = Vector2.zero;
  
              if (timeBetweenMoveCounter < 0f)
              {
                  moving = true;
                  timeToMoveCounter = timeToMove;
  
                  moveDirection = new Vector3(Random.Range(-1f, 1f) * moveSpeed, Random.Range(-1f, 1f) * moveSpeed, 0f);
                  verticalGoesFirst = Random.value >= 0.5f;
                  if (verticalGoesFirst)
                  {
                     axisChangeTime = (moveDirection.y / (moveDirection.x + moveDirection.y)) * timeToMove;
                  }
                  else
                  {
                     axisChangeTime = (moveDirection.x / (moveDirection.x + moveDirection.y)) * timeToMove;
                  }
              }
          }
      }

Should work fine if I didn't miss anything.

How do I make my enemy have animations for directions during movemvent

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