Destroy GameObject but not Trail Renderer

Questions & Answers
1

As it says on the title. I have a game object acting as a pseudo-particle. As it moves it generates a trail, as I want it to. However I have a script attached that destroys the game object after a certain amount of time. When the pseudo-particle dies it destroys the entire object, including the trail renderer. What I want to happen is that the object should appear to abruptly stop in place with the trail renderer continuing along until it reaches where the object stops, then the pseudo-particle dies.

Here’s what the Kill code looks like in the Update function (using C# code)

		if (kill > Random.Range (100,300)) 
		{
			Destroy (gameObject);
		}

Any thoughts?

2

The easiest solution is to just hide the game object and then destroy it sometime in the future:

 if (kill > Random.Range (100,300)) 
 {
     renderer.enabled = false;
     collider.enabled = false;
     Destroy (gameObject, 5);
 }

Another solution would be to make both the TrailRenderer and this object a child of a common parent (empty game object). Movement code would go on the parent.

3

Okay I figured it out.

Neurological got it right on the “stop object programatically” part. However as i’ve tried before, simply adding this line to the Kill function…:
transform.Translate (Vector3.up * speed * Time.deltaTime);
…doesn’t do anything. I instead tied the movement to a Vector3 Variable which is assigned the (Vector3.up * speed * Time.deltaTime) on the Start function. When the object is “killed” it is reassigned to Vector3.zero and the DestroyObject has a delay of 5

The code looks like this for anyone who comes across this question and wants to know how I did it (not the complete code, but the parts unnecessary to the functioning of what I described were omitted)

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class OrthoMove : MonoBehaviour {

	public float speed = 3;

	private Vector3 mover = new Vector3 (); //the variable that moves my pseudo-particle

	private float kill = 0;

	// initialization
	void Awake () {
		mover = (Vector3.up * speed * Time.deltaTime);
	}
	
	void Update () {

		transform.Translate (mover);

		kill = kill + 1; //kill timer. I know it should be 'kill++;' but I never found it to be reliable.

		if (kill > Random.Range (100,3000)) 
		{
			mover = Vector3.zero; //forces pseudo-particle to stop
			Destroy (gameObject, 5); //killswitch
		}
	}
}