Distance between two changing floats?

ok I'm too dumb at math and this is drivin' me crazy. I have found myself wanting the distance between two float numbers (eg positionX to targetX). I tried mathf.absolute and subtracting the two things. But I keep having trouble when the position and target change to and from negative. I'm looking for the right formula to find the distance between two floats regardless of negatives. I know I'm missing something simple . . .

 

Mathf.Abs(targetX - positionX) will be the absolute difference, or distance, between two numbers - regardless whether either number is positive or negative. What are you using the result for? It's likely your trouble is due to your usage...

 

Spoiler: old junk

Well I have a Move() function where I pass in horizontal and vertical amounts from different input methods. And I'm TRYING to make a MoveTo(targetX, targetY) coroutine, where It moves on it's own, one axis at a time, to the target position. So it loops and sends the input to the move function while the distance is too large . .

Code (CSharp):

1. while(Mathf.Abs(targetPosX - transform.position.x) > .05f)
2.             {
3.                 Move (dirX, 0f);
4.                 yield return null;
5.             }

But now that you confirmed it should be right, I'm thinking it's breaking because I'm actually overshooting the target and it's never stopping . . . I really should have done this better :O

You were right, my implementation is wrong, I need to look into clamping my position somewhere or knowing if it overshoots a little bit, thanks

 

Haha, mebbe - depending on the implementation of your Move function, and whatever dirX actually is as well.
Something like this should give you results close to what you describe, just not in a co-routine:

Code (CSharp):

1. using UnityEngine;
2.  
3. public class MoveToTarget : MonoBehaviour
4. {
5.     public Transform Target;
6.     public float MaxSpeed = 1.0f;
7.     public float Threshold = 0.05f;
8.  
9.     private void Update()
10.     {
11.         var delta = Target.position - transform.position;
12.         delta.z = 0.0f;
13.  
14.         if(Mathf.Abs(delta.x) > Threshold)
15.         {
16.             delta.y = 0.0f;
17.         }
18.         else if(Mathf.Abs(delta.y) > Threshold)
19.         {
20.             delta.x = 0.0f;
21.         }
22.         else
23.         {
24.             return;
25.         }
26.  
27.         var move = (delta.normalized * MaxSpeed * Time.deltaTime);
28.         if(move.sqrMagnitude > delta.sqrMagnitude)
29.         {
30.             move = delta;
31.         }
32.  
33.         transform.position += move;
34.     }
35. }

The object will first move towards a target along the x-axis up to a given threshold and at a maximum speed without overshooting, then do the same along the y-axis. Once both axes are at the threshold, it should stay put.
Hope that helps!

 

I'll look into this. Thank you for such a detailed reply!

 

Although it's an quite old post... I've came with a solution that works pretty well for me:
I just check the distance points among the Vectors whom represents the current generated mesh.

in my case it was Vector2 (because it's comparing against two cursor positions...)

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. private const float minAcceptableVertexDistance = 0.05f;
3.          
4. if (Mathf.Abs(initialPosition.x - finalPosition.x) < minAcceptableVertexDistance ||
5.     Mathf.Abs(initialPosition.y - finalPosition.y) < minAcceptableVertexDistance)
6. {
7.     return false;   // Returns out of the function if the points are too close from each other. (Or simply "return")
8. }
9.  

 

[QUOTE="erickluiss, post: 6621754, member: 4477513"I've came with a solution that works pretty well for me[/QUOTE]

That checks whether you're within a square area (or a rectangle if the x,y #'s are different). If you're moving a square around other squares, which can't rotate, it works just fine to be sure no sides or corners can get too close. But otherwise it's clearly a square, and distance-from is a circle. Players will quickly notice that.

 

If you are like me and were looking at this thread for the difference between a target point on the y axis of a rotation and another y value of rotation, you can just use: FloatA - FloatB. This way you still get negative values if you need them.