Bee

Goals

While cubes are cool, they're not that cool. You know what's cool? Bees. Bees are cool.

• Make a swarm of bees

1. Import a bee from the internet

Unfortunately, the Unity store has no good looking bees, so let's import one.

1. Download the Bee 3DS Model
2. Create a Models folder in your hierarchy, and paste the model there
3. Drag the bee model onto your scene to see it render

Note the bee is really large. Thanks, Internet.

1. Click the Bee model in your assets
2. Enter 3e-07 for the scale
3. Scroll down and click Apply

The bee will be smaller - a good size for our app, methinks.

2. Add flight behaviour for our bee

Add a script for the bee called FlyAround with the contents:

using UnityEngine;

public class FlyAround : MonoBehaviour
{
    public float MinSpeed = 1;
    public float MaxSpeed = 5;
    public float MaxRadius = 0.5f;
    private float _speed;

    public Vector3 FlyTowards;
    private Vector3 _worldPosition;

    void Start()
    {
        _worldPosition = transform.position;
        _speed = Random.Range(MinSpeed, MaxSpeed);
        RandomlyFlySomewhere();
    }

    public void RandomlyFlySomewhere()
    {
        FlyTowards = Random.insideUnitSphere * MaxRadius;
    }

    void Update()
    {
        var isAtTarget = BuzzToTarget(_worldPosition + FlyTowards);
        if (isAtTarget)
        {
            RandomlyFlySomewhere();
        }
    }

    private bool BuzzToTarget(Vector3 target)
    {
        var fromObjectToTarget = target - gameObject.transform.position;

        var isAlreadyAtTarget = fromObjectToTarget.sqrMagnitude < 0.0001f;
        if (isAlreadyAtTarget)
        {
            gameObject.transform.position = target;
            return true;
        }

        var delta = Time.deltaTime * fromObjectToTarget.normalized * _speed;
        gameObject.transform.localRotation = Quaternion.LookRotation(fromObjectToTarget.normalized);

        var willOvershootTarget = delta.sqrMagnitude > fromObjectToTarget.sqrMagnitude;
        if (willOvershootTarget)
        {
            gameObject.transform.position = target;
            return true;
        }

        gameObject.transform.position = gameObject.transform.position + delta;
        return false;
    }
}

It's just a bee flying towards random points in a sphere - it won't look like much with a single bee, but it works great with a bunch of them.

Hit play to see if it works. If not, blame math.

Once you're happy:

1. Add the bee to your prefabs
2. Delete the bee from your scene hierarchy.

Next: Add a beehive

Prev: Richer Experience