Does declaring a variable as a reference to a static variable from another class actually create a reference?

Questions & Answers
1

I’m fairly new to Unity and I’ve been creating a menu system. Right now my game just has a few cubes that the user can select using raycasting, but I need to be able to stop that ability when the pause menu opens.

In my pause menu I declared a public static variable to update game is paused and it works, but I found that I have to directly hardcode in the variable I’m calling from my game functionality to stop while paused.

Here’s a cutout of the relevant code where the variable isn’t updating after initialization:

    bool gameIsPaused;

    private void Start()
    {
        bool gameIsPaused = PauseMenu.GameIsPaused;
    }

    private void Update()
    {

        if (gameIsPaused == false)

Here’s a cutout of code where the script works as desired but the variable either has to be hardcoded in, or called every update like this.

bool gameIsPaused;

    private void Update()
    {
        bool gameIsPaused = PauseMenu.GameIsPaused;

        if (gameIsPaused == false)
        {

So I guess my question is: do I have to call the variable gameIsPaused every update? Obviously it’s not a big deal to go with the second option, but I think it’s good to know for the future.

2

Bools are structs. Structs are not reference types. They are value types and are passed by copy not reference in almost all situations.

As you have a static reference to that bool (I assume) I would just refrain from storing it in an instance member on this class (there is no need) and instead access/ use it directly.

i.e.

if(!PauseMenu.GameIsPause) 
{
    // Do this
}

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