Unity – How to make a 2D Tank Game – Player Tank Part 1

This tutorial is based off the player-controlled tank for The Red Front which is currently in development.

Arcade-Action games are a very popular Genre. By following this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a playable tank, make its turret rotate and follow the mouse. In a later tutorial, you will learn how to make the tank move and make it shoot.

You will need to create some basic art, one for the “body” of the tank and one for the “turret” of the tank. These two parts will move independently to each other so will be drawn in two segments.

This tutorial has been written for beginners and assumes basic knowledge of Unity and C# programming.

Skill Level: Beginner

Prepare the game objects and link reference sprites.

The tank we are building will comprise of two separate game objects. One object for the “body” of the tank and one game object for the tank turret. The turret will move independently to the tank body and will be set up to track the player mouse.

The basic setup required for this is as follows:

Following this, you will have the following hierarchy structure and objects created.

Note: If you have any issues with the turret appearing behind the tank body, select the TankTurret object and set the “order in layer” to 1.

Create a new C# script and attach it to the turret Game Object

The following stage will add a new C# script to the turret object which will cause the turret to track the player cursor.

public int rotationOffset = 0;    // This will offset the rotation of the object as it tracks the mouse. This is required to correctly set rotation values

void FixedUpdate() {
Vector3 difference = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint (Input.mousePosition) - transform.position; // This will calculate the distance between the mouse in the game and the position of the tank turret
difference.Normalize ();    // This returns simplified values which makes it easier to work with


float angle = Mathf.Atan2(difference.y, difference.x) * Mathf.Rad2Deg;    // This calculates the angle between the mouse and the turret by using the values derives from the difference calculation.

transform.rotation = Quaternion.RotateTowards (transform.rotation, Quaternion.Euler (0f, 0f, angle + rotationOffset), 200 * Time.deltaTime); // This will rotate the turret towards the calculated angle over time. Tweaking the multiplication value will state how quickly or slowly it will rotate.
}

Summary

You have now created your tank, created a moving turret and have it correctly following the mouse.

There may be some additional questions, so I have created a few example questions below:

Bonus Segment, Sprite Rotation Point

If you would like your turret to rotate around a different central point, select the art piece that you have and click “sprite editor”. The central circle is the sprites rotation point, drag this to your desired location and hit “apply”. Everything else will magically just work!

About This Tutorial Series:

This tutorial series is being written by the developer of “The Red Front”, these tutorials are aimed at new unity users who are interested in getting involved in Game Development. These tutorials are real-world examples based off methods that are currently used in The Red Front. Visit us at www.theredfront.com