Unity Spaceship Tutorial

So, say I was just starting out in Unity, and I wanted to make a space game. The first thing I want to program? the ship! The problem? I can’t program to save my life! (this is not me by the way, just a hypothetical situation ;)) So, if this is you, or maybe even if it’s not, read on!

ShipController(Realistic).js, a script I made with the purpose of controlling spaceships in mind. Note: you may use this free for commercial and non-commercial applications, however, please do not sell this in a package or by itself on the asset store or other publishing services without my consent.

Ok, the script can be found below. So how do you use it? Set up unity as such:

your spaceship, z facing forward, y up and x to the right. Add a rigid-body component. Attach this script.

What do all the variables mean? turnspeed: the rate of roll, pitch and yaw (more on that later). speed: self-explanitory. trueSpeed: the current coefficient for speed. strafeSpeed: the strafing rate. Ok, so, here’s how it works: pressing your power buttons turns up and down your trueSpeed value, it then adds force based on this value using speed as a multiplier. pressing your strafe axes causes the ship to go along the x or y axis. your other buttons add torque corresponding to roll, pitch (up and down) and yaw (left and right). pressing backspace automatically sets trueSpeed to 0 (useful for stopping).

So, how do you set up your axes?

First, go into Project Settings –> Input, then name some axes accordingly

Yaw, Pitch, Roll, Power, and Horizontal and Vertical for strafing. you can expand the amount of axes using size. Mine is set to 21. I recommend setting up the actual keys like this (Note, strafe is supposed to be w, a, s and d, do not be confused by the fact that it’s only pointing to d):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So now you are on your way to making a great space game! Tweak the values (note: you may need to try some very high values to get it to work), test the game, and if you come up with anything cool, please leave me a comment!

var turnspeed = 5.0;
var speed = 5.0;
private var trueSpeed = 0.0;
var strafeSpeed = 5.0;

function Update () {

	var roll = Input.GetAxis("Roll");
	var pitch = Input.GetAxis("Pitch");
	var yaw = Input.GetAxis("Yaw");
	var strafe = Vector3(Input.GetAxis("Horizontal")*strafeSpeed*Time.deltaTime, Input.GetAxis("Vertical")*strafeSpeed*Time.deltaTime, 0);

	var power = Input.GetAxis("Power");

	//Truespeed controls

	if (trueSpeed < 10 && trueSpeed > -3){
	trueSpeed += power;
	}
	if (trueSpeed > 10){
	trueSpeed = 9.99;	
	}
	if (trueSpeed < -3){
	trueSpeed = -2.99;	
	}
	if (Input.GetKey("backspace")){
		trueSpeed = 0;
	}

	rigidbody.AddRelativeTorque(pitch*turnspeed*Time.deltaTime, yaw*turnspeed*Time.deltaTime, roll*turnspeed*Time.deltaTime);
	rigidbody.AddRelativeForce(0,0,trueSpeed*speed*Time.deltaTime);
	rigidbody.AddRelativeForce(strafe);
}