Carrying and Dropping objects help

I'm making a game where you play as a harpy mailman. Now this means part of the game is lifting up larger packages and carrying them while flying. I've got the flying down, but I'm having an issue with with picking up other objects. I'm thinking I'd need to make the object a child of the player. There isn't an inventory or anything that the object would go in, and it's a 2D game. Help?

 

Well, you have an idea, just curious, but did you try it out?

Chances are you'd want to make it a child and then possibly position it so it's in the characters hands. Or, you could even just have a sprite that already has the package in hand and swap sprites when the character picks something up. Or, even have a package already in place as a child and turn that on and off as needed.

There are many ways to do things and you'll just need to choose one that works for you, but certainly don't be afraid to try things out.

 

I did. I would make a sprite with the package in hand, but I'm wanting to make mechanics where if you hit a wall you drop it, as well as just straight up dropping it to deliver. I'm still somewhat new to Unity too.

 

Take these issues one at a time instead of trying to do it all at once. As already mentioned, to have your character carry an object the simplest way is to parent the object to the character and position it relative to the character.

Dropping an object is usually as easy as making the object no longer a child of the parent and letting rigidbody physics do the work of having it fall with gravity.

Detecting a hit against a wall is generally done using colliders. You detect a collision, you verify what you collided with is something you are interested in (check the tag assigned to the gameobject that you collided with for example), and then do something in response. That something you do could then be to call your drop object method.

 

Not sure if you want to use real physics to carry your payload, like suspended from your player, but if you want an example, check this:

https://bitbucket.org/kurtdekker/jiggly_lander

It's a little jiggly-legged lander that can also pick up payloads, which swing around as if on a rope as you try to fly. It uses some kind of hinge to connect it; I forget the details but it's all in the code.

 

Ok. Thanks for the help, after a little while I got it and it works great now, all it needs is polishing.