Last updated: December 14, 2022

To do:

• Talk about Action Processors (for setting gamepad look sensitivity to be equivalent to mouse look sensitivity).
• Use <Binding> instead of <Controls>
• Control remapping and accessibility settings (look sensitivity, mouse sensitivity, zoom sensitivity, invert axis).
• Talk about state management via Action Maps.
• Show how to do advanced controls (combinations, multipress, holds) via Interactions.
• Gamepad rumble, gyroscope controls, etc: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/Gamepad.html.

Quick checklist

Introduction

This is a comprehensive guide for those wanting to design and implement a robust input system for PC or Console games in Unity. If you follow this guide, your input system will allow for:

• Decoupled input reading from gameplay, allowing you to cleanly support multiple input devices.
• Easily triggering actions through more advanced inputs, such as holding down buttons for specific amounts of time, or pressing button combinations.
• Easily adding new controls.
• Allowing the player to remap inputs through an options menu.

The first section, titled ‘Game Design’, describes a framework for designing, organizing, and communicating control schemes with collaborators. The second section, titled ‘Implementation’ will be about implementation itself, and will cover Unity’s Input System Package as well as software architecture (Event Channels). If you are short on time, skip the first section and go straight to ‘Implementation’.

Game Design

Definitions

A <Control> (or <Input Control>) are the physical inputs that a player performs on their input device in order to trigger a specific [Action]. Each control is specific to a particular input device, and each input device has a comprehensive list of controls called a control scheme. Multiple <Controls> can be binded to the same [Action]. Also, an individual <Control> can actually be rather complicated; it can require buttons to be held down, control sticks to be in specific positions, or consist of multiple buttons being pressed simultaneously or in sequence. Some <Controls> that the player can perform to play Skyrim on mouse/keyboard are: <W>, <A>, <S>, <D>, <Mouse Delta>, <Spacebar>, <E>, <Left Shift>, <Left Control>, <I>, <Hold R for 1 second>, etc.

An [Action] (or [Input Action]) is a logical input which the player can trigger by performing a <Control>. Once an [Action] is triggered, if certain gameplay conditions are met, a gameplay reaction is triggered. The purpose of [Actions] are to abstract logical inputs from physical inputs, so that you can cleanly decouple gameplay from inputs (making it easy to support multiple input devices, or multiple control schemes). Some [Actions] that can be triggered in a game like Skyrim include: [Move], [Look], [Toggle Walk/Run], [Jump], [Interact], [Sprint], [Toggle Crouch], [Open Inventory], [Toggle Sheathe], etc.