In this video
- Add New Object -> Guide Hand, and size its box
- Point at: the fingertip lands on any object, live
- Six gestures: tap, double tap, press & hold, drag, swipe, draw a circle
- Drag to another object, or a direction in hand widths
- Light hand, dark hand, or your own picture with its fingertip set
- One loop, appears after, hide on the first touch, come back when idle
- Three tips for tutorial hands that work
About this video
Players skip text, but they copy a hand. The Guide Hand is a scene object that performs the gesture on the real thing: it taps, holds, drags or swipes on the object you point it at, loops until the first touch, gets out of the way, and comes back if the player stalls. It never catches a tap itself, so whatever it points at still works. This tutorial builds a small treasure scene from scratch and walks every setting in the Guide Hand inspector, shown on the canvas and tested in Play.
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Transcript
Players don't read instructions. They copy a hand. This one taps the gift until I touch the screen, gets out of the way, and comes back when I stop.
That's the Guide Hand. In the next few minutes: pointing it at any object, all six gestures, its looks, and the timing that hides it and brings it back.
This project started from scratch. Click Add New Object, then Guide Hand. It lands in the middle of the canvas.
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The box is the size of the hand. I'll make it a little bigger: 90 × 110.
Everything else is under Object-Specific Properties, in three groups: gesture, look, and timing.
Point at picks the thing to touch. I'll choose the gift, and the fingertip lands right on its centre.
It reads that position live. Move the gift, and the hand follows it, in both orientations, and even while the gift is animating.
Tap is the default. The hand presses, and a ripple spreads from the fingertip. Use it for anything the player should tap.
Double tap presses twice, for a double-tap rule.
Press and hold keeps the finger down while a ring fills. That says hold to claim, without a single word.
Drag is for moving something. Point it at the coins, and set Drag to the piggy bank. The hand carries them across, and a dotted path shows the way.
Swipe flicks instead of carrying. It has a direction, and a distance measured in hand widths, so it keeps its shape on any canvas size. Up, three hands long.
Draw a circle traces a loop around the spot. That's for scratch cards, or rubbing something clean.
Show the path switches off the dots and the ring, when you want only the hand.
Under Look, there's a light hand, and a dark hand for pale backgrounds.
Or My picture. I'll pick one from the Hands folder in the library.
A picture doesn't know where its fingertip is, so you tell it. Fingertip across 7%, and down 1%. Now the tip is on the gift, not the palm.
Ripple colour tints the ring, the hold ring and the path. Gold, to match the title.
Under Timing, One loop sets the speed. Faster feels urgent, slower feels calm. 1.6 seconds is a good middle.
Appears after waits before the hand shows up, so your entrance animations can finish first. One second.
Hide on the first touch is on, and Come back when idle for, I'll set to three seconds. Zero means it never comes back.
Now press Play. The hand waits a second, then starts tapping the gift.
I tap the gift, right through the hand. The hand disappears, and the gift still got the tap. The hand never catches a touch. That pop is a Feel Effect, by the way.
Now I stop. Three seconds of nothing, and it comes back to remind me.
And like any object, it has an Animate tab, if you want it to slide or fade in.
Three tips. One: one hand at a time. Two hands pointing at two things is a question, not an answer.
Two: point it at the object, instead of placing it by eye. Then it stays right when the layout changes.
Three: always let it come back. The player who stalls is the one who needs it most.
Next up: Feel Effect, to make every tap feel good.
That's the Guide Hand. See you in the next video!