Moving an object towards consistently in time, within a number of of "ticks"

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So I'm building a game where you can control the speed. Because of use case reasons, I just cannot change the global time scaling on the game, so I'm working with a series of "ticks" (Things that move do so on each ticks). Most movable objects are subscribed to an event that "ticks".

I need to move an object from point A to B in a number of ticks that I have set beforehand - lets say 30. So basically I need to move that object a 1/30th of the way on each tick.

I could simply get the tick number, get a ratio of the distance (named p) and multiply the vector that way. So on each tick my object will move towards that B point:

 Vector3 targetPosition = new Vector3(targetButtonPosition.x * p, targetButtonPosition.y * p, targetButtonPosition.z * p);

Of course, its "teleporting" on each tick. Is there any way to get a more adequate smooth movement with these requirements?

I'm thinking using Lerp should do the trick, but I'm not sure how.

Thanks peeps!

Answer 1

Answer by homer_3 · Apr 22 at 02:57 PM

Because of use case reasons, I just cannot change the global time scaling on the game,

For this, I usually make my own Time class and set the execution order to be negative. Then in the update, store Time.deltaTime to a member and also have your own timeScale member. Have a GetDeltaTime() function that returns the member deltaTime * the member timeScale. Any object you want to control the time speed of, have it reference this wrapper time class. So you can say

 MyTime.timeScale = .5f
 transform.position += MyTime.GetDeltaTime() * moveSpeed;

Lerp is doing the exact same thing you described when computing p.

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Bonfire-Boy · Apr 22 at 03:19 PM 0

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I'm curious, why do you need to do the Script Execution Order trick (and cache the value of Time.deltaTime)? Why can't you just return Time.deltaTime * MyTime.timeScale?
Which then effectively becomes the same as the solution I mentioned in my comment, but with a function to wrap up that calculation... which I agree is an improvement. What puzzles me is why this even needs to be a MonoBehaviour. Can't it be a simple static class like this?

 public static class MyTime
 {
    public float myTimeScale = 0.5f;
    public float myDeltaTime
    {
         get { return Time.deltaTime * myTimescale; }
    }
 }

homer_3 Bonfire-Boy · Apr 22 at 03:26 PM 0

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That's true, you probably don't really need to keep a copy of deltaTime and do the execution order. I do it just so the class has more control of everything, but your solution is even simpler and should work just as well.

Moving an object towards consistently in time, within a number of of "ticks"

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