Detect left and right movement of sprite

Question

I have a sprite of ball which moves when a player tap and holds the ball and move finger on the screen. I have a attached animations on it. straight, left, right and when the ball hits something.

Here is my code: ball.cs

 public RuntimeAnimatorController straight;
    public RuntimeAnimatorController left;
    public RuntimeAnimatorController right;
    public RuntimeAnimatorController ballHit;

    Animator animator;
    Vector2 prevPos;

    private void Start()
    {
        animator = gameObject.GetComponent<Animator>();
    }

    void Update () 
     {

         //Gets the world position of the mouse on the screen        
         Vector2 mousePosition = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition);

         //Checks whether the mouse is over the sprite
         bool overSprite = this.GetComponent<SpriteRenderer>().bounds.Contains(mousePosition);
         if(GameObject.Find("GameController").GetComponent<brickMovement>().gameOver == true)
        {

            animator.applyRootMotion = true;
            animator.updateMode = AnimatorUpdateMode.UnscaledTime;
            animator.runtimeAnimatorController = ballHit;
        }
         //If it's over the sprite
         if (overSprite)
         {
             //If we've pressed down on the mouse (or touched on the iphone)
             if (Input.GetButton("Fire1") && GameObject.Find("GameController").GetComponent<brickMovement>().gamepaused == false && GameObject.Find("GameController").GetComponent<brickMovement>().gameOver == false)
             {
                 float x = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition).x;
                 float y = Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition).y;
                 //Set the position to the mouse position
                 prevPos = this.transform.position;

                 //Debug.Log(animator.runtimeAnimatorController);
                 if ((x > -1.938 && y > -4.51) && (x < 1.98 && y < 4.5))
                 {
                    //Debug.Log("Previous Pos: " + prevPos.x);
                    Debug.Log(IsThisObjectMoving());
                    if (this.transform.position.x < 0 && IsThisObjectMoving())
                     {
                        animator.runtimeAnimatorController = left;
                     }
                     else if (this.transform.position.x > 0 && IsThisObjectMoving())
                     {
                        animator.runtimeAnimatorController = right;
                     }
                     else if (this.transform.position.x == prevPos.x)
                     {
                        animator.runtimeAnimatorController = straight;
                     }
                     this.transform.position = new Vector3(Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition).x,
                     Camera.main.ScreenToWorldPoint(Input.mousePosition).y,
                     0.0f);
                 }
             }
         }
     }

    bool IsThisObjectMoving()
    {
        Vector3 sek0pos;
        Vector3 sek1pos;

        sek0pos = gameObject.transform.position;
        StartCoroutine(delay());
        sek1pos = gameObject.transform.position;

        if ((sek1pos.x - sek0pos.x) > 0f)
            return true;
        else
            return false;
    }

    /*

    Make function out of the above function that will check if object is
    moving left or right.

    */
    IEnumerator delay()
    {
        yield return new WaitForSeconds(1.0f);
    }

I am having issue in detecting if ball is moving left or right. When ball is not moving straight animation should be played. but when it is the respective direction animation should be played.

Secondly when I do a hit animation it ends quickly without getting played properly.

Answer 1

Note that the IEnumerator delay() in your code doesn't do anything. In the IsThisObjectMoving() function, calling StartCoroutine(delay()) returns immediately, so sek0pos and sek1pos are always the exact same.

If you want to add a 1-second delay within the IsThisObjectMoving() function, you can mark this function as async Task<bool> (including System.Threading.Tasks), use await Task.Delay(1000) instead of using your delay() IEnumerator, and using the function within an await statement: if(await IsThisObjectMoving()){ /*...*/ } (the function in which this is called will need to be marked async as well). The function will then return after one full second. Note that you'd need .NET 4.x to be able to use async functionality natively in Unity.

Depending on what you want to do exactly, you may want to look into other alternatives. For example, you can sample consecutive positions within different frames in Update(), or discard Update() and rewrite it as a coroutine which runs infinitely on the GameObject, sampling the position every second; something like so:

void Start(){
    StartCoroutine(positionSample());
}

IEnumerator positionSample(){
    Vector3 previousPosition = transform.position;
    Vector3 currentPosition;

    while(true){
         yield return new WaitForSeconds(1);
         currentPosition = transform.position;

         // use the two positions to determine what you need

         previousPosition = currentPosition;
    }
}