Camera is not following my player during some movements?

My game is first person and I’m using 3D with no cinemachine. I have a ceiling object that I can only pass through when crouched. Currently when I crouch, my camera will change its position to match my player scale when crouching, and when I uncrouch, nothing happens because I am under a ceiling, which is all good.

However, if I uncrouch whilst under a ceiling and then move out of the ceiling, my player will automatically revert back to standing scale (which is good) but the camera will still be stuck in the crouch position. To fix it, I just tap the crouch key and the camera reverts back to its original standing position. I am trying to make the camera move to default position just like the player scale reverts automatically.

My solution was to add a while loop but that froze my unity during runtime.

public class FollowPlayer : MonoBehaviour
{

    public PlayerMovement move;

    public Transform player;
    private Vector3 offset = new Vector3(0f, 0.779f, 0f); // default camera position on runtime
    private Vector3 newOffset = new Vector3(0f, -0.100f, 0f); // camera position while crouched
    private Vector3 originalOffset = new Vector3(0f, 0.779f, 0f); // camera position after uncrouching

    public void Update()
    {
        // Make the camera follow the player
        transform.position = player.position + offset;

        ...

        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.LeftControl))
        {
            offset = newOffset;
        }

        if (Input.GetKeyUp(KeyCode.LeftControl))
        {
            offset = originalOffset;
        }

        if (Input.GetKeyUp(KeyCode.LeftControl) && move.isCeilingAbove == true)
        {
            offset = newOffset;
        }

    }
}

I have my isCeilingAbove bool referenced from another script which prevents my player from uncrouching whilst under an object using the “Ceiling” tag. This may not be the best way to do this but I want to get it right using my own script.

Unity will lock up 100% of the time EVERY millisecond your scripting code is running.

Nothing will render, no input will be processed, no Debug.Log() will come out, no GameObjects or transforms will appear to update.

Absolutely NOTHING will happen… until your code either:

  • returns from whatever function it is running

  • yields from whatever coroutine it is running

As long as your code is looping, Unity isn’t going to do even a single frame of change. Nothing.

No exceptions.

“Yield early, yield often, yield like your game depends on it… it does!” - Kurt Dekker

Well if you insist on rolling your own camera code, it is time to start debugging!

Here is how you can begin your exciting new debugging adventures:

You must find a way to get the information you need in order to reason about what the problem is.

Once you understand what the problem is, you may begin to reason about a solution to the problem.

What is often happening in these cases is one of the following:

  • the code you think is executing is not actually executing at all
  • the code is executing far EARLIER or LATER than you think
  • the code is executing far LESS OFTEN than you think
  • the code is executing far MORE OFTEN than you think
  • the code is executing on another GameObject than you think it is
  • you’re getting an error or warning and you haven’t noticed it in the console window

To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling Debug.Log() statements through your code to display information in realtime.

Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:

  • is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run? what order does it run in?
  • what are the names of the GameObjects or Components involved?
  • what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized? Are the values reasonable?
  • are you meeting ALL the requirements to receive callbacks such as triggers / colliders (review the documentation)

Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.

You can also supply a second argument to Debug.Log() and when you click the message, it will highlight the object in scene, such as Debug.Log("Problem!",this);

If your problem would benefit from in-scene or in-game visualization, Debug.DrawRay() or Debug.DrawLine() can help you visualize things like rays (used in raycasting) or distances.

You can also call Debug.Break() to pause the Editor when certain interesting pieces of code run, and then study the scene manually, looking for all the parts, where they are, what scripts are on them, etc.

You can also call GameObject.CreatePrimitive() to emplace debug-marker-ish objects in the scene at runtime.

You could also just display various important quantities in UI Text elements to watch them change as you play the game.

Visit Google for how to see console output from builds. If you are running a mobile device you can also view the console output. Google for how on your particular mobile target, such as this answer or iOS: https://discussions.unity.com/t/700551 or this answer for Android: https://discussions.unity.com/t/699654

If you are working in VR, it might be useful to make your on onscreen log output, or integrate one from the asset store, so you can see what is happening as you operate your software.

Another useful approach is to temporarily strip out everything besides what is necessary to prove your issue. This can simplify and isolate compounding effects of other items in your scene or prefab.

Here’s an example of putting in a laser-focused Debug.Log() and how that can save you a TON of time wallowing around speculating what might be going wrong:

https://discussions.unity.com/t/839300/3

“When in doubt, print it out!™” - Kurt Dekker (and many others)

Note: the print() function is an alias for Debug.Log() provided by the MonoBehaviour class.