We Keep Coding

Unity - healthbar as outlined line around the screen

I have a game in Unity.
The idea of the game is that an object is spawned on the screen.
It exists for several seconds.
You need to click on it, while it exists.
What I want to do, is that while it exists - I want to show a timer, but not with numbers, but with an outlined line on the perimeter of the screen.
I know, how to make a make a slider and how to make circular health bar, yet I do not really have an idea to make a slider, that is decresing from everywhere to the centre as you can see on the screenshots below.
I would be thankful for the inspiration!

This should be a very good fit using alpha cutoff with a custom shader.
Here's a video explaining it in detail (it's only the first half you will need).
The basic idea is to create a texture with a graded alpha depending on how you want the texture to appear/disappear. In this case the alpha value at the top and the bottom would be close to 0 and then gradually around the line on both sides towards the middle increase to 1. The shader then cuts off the texture below a cutoff threshold which you can change depending on the value of the timer.

As a dumb and simple approach:
Have two images with fill, one goes middle towards top the other middle towards bottom.
Just imagine the pnguin is your outline ^^

Creating turning animation for up and down or rubiks cube

im creating a rubiks cube solver and simulator for my a level project and i have come across the problem of the top face of the cube not rotating properly. After a few tests of it i have come to the conclusion that the top face is rotating around the axis properly but in order for it to stay in line witht eh rest of the cube i also need to update the other axis. This is my code to rotate the face
for (int i = 0; i < 90 * n; i++)
{
cube[0].rotateY(degree); // degree is defined as Math.PI / 180 as its in radians
cube[3].rotateY(degree);
cube[6].rotateY(degree);
cube[9].rotateY(degree);
cube[12].rotateY(degree);
cube[14].rotateY(degree);
cube[17].rotateY(degree);
cube[20].rotateY(degree);
cube[23].rotateY(degree);
Invalidate();
}
I have tried also rotating the left and right side and they both work correctly while using the same function but for the other axis. i have definitions for the entire cubes rotation stored in rotation with x y and z properties. Initially i thought this wouldnt be a very hard fix so as well as rotating each cube on the y axis i rotated them along the x axis but for -rotation.x * 2 in order to counteract the problem however this didnt work and just transformed it into very weird positions. Im sure its just a simple maths expresion that i need to rotate it by but i cant work it out.
As i found it hard to explain my problem ive created this video to show it visually. You can see that the left and right rotations work although they are not yet animated and the top face rotates round and always snaps back into the original position but not the other 4 correctly. I am also aware that the colours dont come round the cube like they should but this is something i will work on once all the rotations work
Video of current coded soloution
the functions for the rotations simply update the rotation variable and redraws the cube and all the different cube's in the array are just there as i have created 26 smaller cubes to create 1 bigger cube so that rotations can work without just changing the colour.
If anyone has a nice maths equation to rotate this correctly that would be great but if not and you have another way of rotating the cubes in the cube then that would also be great.
Also just a side quest if anyone knows why my code doesnt rotate the side by 1 degree and then redraw it again inside the Invalidate command then id love to hear why.
Many thanks in advance.

How to make a Chunks in Unity 2D

Create 2D Top Down Chunks
I was wondering how I can make a chunk system in Unity2D. My map is too big, I want to make a system of chunks, to unload and load the parts of the map, as the player progresses.
I need to do this for the game to be more optimized, but I don't know how to do that.
I've already tried to create some code or search for examples on the internet, but unfortunately I didn't find anything.

The problem in the question can be solved with a lot of strategies, but all of them require good programming experience.
I can give you an idea to send you on a good path, but without writing code, because for each project the code would change.
Think you have 4 parts. These parts are rectangular or square and form a large rectangle much larger than the player's view.
The player can start from any position, but for the example imagine that he is in the first rectangle, the one at the bottom left.
We call the rectangles A, the lower left one, B the lower right one, C the upper left one, and D the upper right one.
When the player goes to the right, walking for a while he will arrive in rectangle B.
If it continues to move to the right at some point it will arrive at the end of rectangle B and at this point you have to place rectangle A, which is on the left, next to the right side of rectangle B, so that the player does not see the end.
We now have rectangle A on the right and rectangle B on the left.
If the player continues to go to the right, he will reach the boundary of rectangle A, and there you have to move rectangle B to the right of the terrace A, as in the initial situation.
If the player goes to the left you have to think in the opposite way.
If it goes up, you have to think about the same system, but instead of with rectangles A and B, with rectangles A and C or B and D: it depends on which one it is.
This is one way to have an infinite map.
You can customize this system to have not 4 blocks but more, and to get the result you want.

Unity2D Moving along grid lines

I'm making what is essentially a board game within Unity 2D. The player will be able to move their pieces along a grid (see below). The larger circular sprites are the pieces, which the player can click on, then click a gridPoint (the small squares) to move to it.
I've created the grid by using empty gameobjects (I've rendered a sprite on them for visual help) at each intersection. These are the points where players can move between. The distance between the points varies, though the horizontal distance is always 1.
The full functionality would be...
A player clicks on a piece,
A preview area of where the piece can move to is shown.
Player clicks on a valid grid point where the piece should move to.
Grid piece moves to new point.
First of all, have I created this in the right way? I need the grid to be accurate, as it will be populated with an accurate sky map. Currently this grid is accurate.
Assuming this is the right way of doing it, how do I, when a piece is selected, work out which grid points are within range? Say a piece can move 4 spaces, then any space 4 grid points away from origin (horizontally, vertically and diagonally) can be moved to. I'd also need to count how many spaces the piece has moved.
I also need to make the piece travel from it's original position, to the new grid point, via grid points using the shortest route.
Any help is appreciated.

OK, there are many solution for this, but let's keep it simple!!
simple overview of your solution step!!
If your grid is fixes size(i.e fix height and width unity length), then put custom placeholder (empty gameobject)in intersection point
detect the swipe detection(assuming you working with this mechanism) from current tapping piece to direction.
using any tween library(i suggest DoTween library from unity asset store, it's free and absolutely amazing.)move your piece to that placeholder.
Now bit more in depth Understanding!!
please refer the below reference.
initial condition of any type of grid
after creating the grid, you can put empty gameobject as an placeholder in between grid(you can make it invisible- i.e make it alpha 0 of image property!)
placeholder in between gap of grid
you can make you piece(player) child of any of these placeholder.
you will detect the swipe or even tap mechanism and check weather in what ever direction you swapping or in which invisible placeholder you tapping, has any child??
if yes, that means that placeholder is already occupied with other piece(player). so no logic to move your current piece. so ignore the swipe.
if no, that means placeholder is empty, so its valid move.
using any tween library, from current placeholder position to desired placeholder, move your piece(player).
after reaching to desired placeholder, make that piece the child of that desired placeholder(using setparent(desiredplaceholder.gameobject.transform.position) kinda code)
and you done!!
hope you find this helpful!!

Math - Displaying multiple objects in a single view using trigonometry

It might be that my math is rusty or I'm just stuck in my box after trying to solve this for so long, either way I need your help.
Background: I'm making a 2d-based game in C# using XNA. In that game I want a camera to be able to zoom in/out so that a certain part of objects always are in view. Needless to say, the objects move in two dimensions while the camera moves in three.
Situation: I'm currently using basic trigonometry to calculate which height the camera should be at for all objects to show. I also position the camera between those objects.
It looks something like this:
1.Loop through all objects to find the outer edges of our objects : farRight, farLeft, farUp, farDown.
2.When we know what the edges of what has to be shown are, calculate the center, also known as the camera position:
CenterX = farLeft + (farRight - farLeft) * 0.5f;
CenterY = farUp + (farDown - farUp) * 0.5f;
3.Loop through our edges to find the largest value compared to our camera position, thus the furthest distance from the center of screen.
4.Using the largest distance-value we can easily calculate the needed height to show all of those objects (points):
float T = 90f - Constants.CAMERA_FIELDOFVIEW * 0.5f;
float height = (float)Math.Tan(MathHelper.ToRadians(T)) * (length);
So far so good, the camera positions itself perfectly based on the calculations.
Problem:
a) My rendering target is 1280*720 with a Field of View of 45 degrees, so one always sees a bit more on the X-axis, 560 pixels more actually. This is not a problem per se but more one that on b)...
b) I want the camera to be a bit further out than it is, so that one sees a bit more on what is happening beyond the furthest point. Sure, this happens on the X-axis, but that is technically my flawed logic's result. I want to be able to see more on both the X- and Y-axis and to control this behavior.
Question
Uhm, so to clarify. I would like to have some input on a way to make the camera position itself, creating this state:
Objects won't get closer than say... 150 pixels to the edge of the X-axis and 100 pixels to the edge of the Y-axis. To do this the camera shall position itself along the Z-axis so that the field of view covers it all.
I don't need help with the coding, just the math and logic of calculating the height of my camera. As you probably can see, I have a hard time wrapping this inside my head and even harder time trying to explain it to you.
If anyone out there has been dealing with this or is just better than me at math, I'd appreciate whatever you have to say! :)

Don't you just need to add or subtract 150 or 100 pixels (depending on which edge you are looking at) to each distance measurement in your loop at step 3 and carry this larger value into length at step 4? Or am I missing something.

I can't explore this area further at the moment, but if anyone is having the same issue but is not satisfied by provided answer there is another possibility in XNA.
ViewPort.Unproject()
This nifty feature converts a screen space coordinate to a world space one.
ViewPort.Project()
Does the opposite thing, namely converting world space to screen space. Just thought that someone might want to go further than me. As much as my OCD hates to leave things not perfect, I can't be perfectioning this... yet.