Detecting Character Movement On Mobile Controls

MapleMarvel · September 10, 2018, 5:54pm

Is there a way to detect forward, back, left and right movement on a mobile device?

Detecting character movement on a keyboard device is simple using PlayerActions:

game:GetService("ContextActionService"):BindAction("forward", OnCharacterMovementAction, false, Enum.PlayerActions.CharacterForward)

However, on a mobile device, the above code does not trigger when the user moves the virtual movement joystick (not sure if that is a bug or not).

Kiansjet · September 10, 2018, 6:16pm

This article might help

https://www.robloxdev.com/articles/Mobile-Controls

tl;dr find the mobile controls UI and bind to TouchSwipe.

Defaultio · September 10, 2018, 6:19pm

This is the current best way to get movement input, regardless of platform:

Try this:
local player = game.Players.LocalPlayer
local masterControl = require(player.PlayerScripts:WaitForChild("ControlScript"):WaitForChild("MasterControl"))
local inputVector = masterControl:GetMoveVector()
This will allow you to get the default movement input regardless of platform or input device.

https://devforum.roblox.com/t/best-input-detection-for-mobile-controls/48982/5

It should be noted that with the release of player scripts v2 soonish, this specific method will break and the way you get the input vector from the control script will be slightly different.

MapleMarvel · September 10, 2018, 8:24pm

This is really helpful, thank you!

Would you happen to know what the values of this vector represent? On a keyboard, the values are integers -1, 0, 1 for x, y, z depending on the direction you are going. But for the mobile controls the values are real numbers over a wider number range.

Defaultio · September 10, 2018, 10:32pm

I think the Y value is not used.

The X and Z values are a 2D vector that represents the direction of the movement input. For keyboard, X and Z can only be -1, 0, or 1, but with the mobile thumbstick and gamepad there is analog control, so the vector components are not discrete. In this case, the magnitude of the vector is used for walkspeed control.