Velocity and Impulse

Heya Guys

I am polishing my characters movement, and i want him to get knocked back when hit. no i have managed to get a result but i need some deeper understanding of whats happening here. my code below.

I accept input from my controller to move velocity directly.

Code (CSharp):

1.         if (canMove && moveHorizontal != 0)
2.         {
3.             rb2d.velocity = new Vector2(moveHorizontal, rb2d.velocity.y); // change in velocity
4.             animator.SetFloat("Speed", Mathf.Abs(moveHorizontal));
5.  
6.             if(controllerY && animator.GetFloat("Speed") > 0)
7.             {
8.                 animator.SetTrigger("Sliding");
9.             }
10.         }

and KnockBack is called when my character is in range and takes a hit. thrustVal is a negative or positive value parsed in depending on what side the player and enemy interact. I have tried AddForce but the below seemed to workbetter.

Code (CSharp):

1.     public void KnockBack(float thrustVal)
2.     {
3.         rb2d.velocity = new Vector2(thrustVal, transform.position.y);
4.     }

My Question is why wont my KnockBack Function work when I remove the "(&& moveHorizontal)" parameter in my canMove IF statement.

and since I have implimented the above code my character has started sliding a little wtf ?

your feedback is much appreciated.

 

Ok so I realized the reason my player character is sliding is because i have inadvertently removed "0" from being a parameter in the canMove Velocity statement. So the player is sliding to a stop every time.

And i am assuming, that My Velocity is actually being set to Zero every single frame because of the input retrieved. and KnockBack(); will never work because velocity.x is still being reset to zero every frame.