How to use WASD to move camera between a collection of position marker objects?

Question

How can I move one camera between two positions along the cardinal directions?

Using W/A/S/D keys, I want to move the camera from one empty object to another on the xy plane. Those empty objects would act like destination points for the single camera object.

I don't want to assign a unique key for each destination point, so instead the W key should always go to the next object to the left, etc.

When a directional key is pressed, the camera should move to the closest marker point in that direction. There can be many of these points, arranged somewhat like a grid, but the spacing is not guaranteed to be equal.

Answer 1

Try something along the lines of this:

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class CameraMover : MonoBehaviour
{
    public struct TransformRow {
          [SerializeField] public Transform[] row;
    }

    [SerializeField] private List<TransformRow> grid = new List<TransformRow>(); //Set this up in editor
    private Vector2Int gridPosition = new Vector2Int(0, 0);
    [SerializeField] private Camera camera;

    public Transform GetTransformAtPosition(Vector2Int position) 
    {
        return grid[position.x].row[position.y];
    }

    private void Update() 
    {
        //Put your movement code here. Adjust it so it changes gridPosition, but only once and only by one when the key is first pressed.
        camera.transform.position = GetTransformAtPosition(gridPosition).position;
    }
}

Essentially, you’re just chucking all the empty game objects that act as the points for the camera to warp to into what is essentially a 2D array, which creates the lattice you want. Then you just have to add the code to teleport the camera to the empty game object :).

Ideally you would want to refactor some parts of this code to better fit your purpose. This code is definitely not optimised nor solid, but I trust you’ll be able to optimise this solution.