BoxCollider2D not re-enabling when a parent is enabled

Unity Engine
,
1

I have a scene for a 2D project with several layers that are turned on/off at various stages in the game. Each layer has a few interactive components utilizing BoxCollider2d along with OnMouseDown events. Everything works as intended when the layer is never disabled, however, if the layer is disabled and then later re-enabled via a SetActive call my OnMouseDown events never trigger.

After some digging, I found that while in play mode if I disable and then enable my BoxCollider2D for the interactive components (after the layer has been enabled) everything works fine (note: the BoxCollider2D component is enabled when I inspect). Tired of always having random unexplained issues with Unity, I put together this work around and everything is working as expected.

private void OnEnable()
        {
            GetComponent<Collider2D>().enabled = false;
            GetComponent<Collider2D>().enabled = true;
        }

In this code, I couldn’t just set the collider to true. I had to first disable then reenable the collider. Not sure if it matters but the interactive components are inherited from a base class that derives MonoBehaviour.

I mean, it’s all working now, but I really don’t want to leave bad hacks if I can avoid. This seems like something way too common to be a Unity bug, right? Is there a better solution?

2

Working on more layers and this continues to be a problem even with the above solution. I tried a new method where I generated the layers as prefabs. Still an issue… Any ideas on what is causing the actual problem? Is Sprite → OnMouseDown not reliable? Maybe I should switch to a raycast method? (in other news: why is Unity so much struggle? Is there a better 2d game engine on the market yet?)