How to access an inactive gameObject with tag

Questions & Answers
1

Hello. I have a gameObject called playerWeaponsPrefab which has 4 children, the first child is tagged as PrimaryWeapon, the second is tagged as SecondaryWeapon, the third is tagged as Knife and the forth is a grenade, I want to select these weapons in game by pressing 1,2,3 and 4 buttons ( while a weapon is selected others must be inactive). I put these weapon gameObjects in 4 variables and used GameObject.FindwithTag(exampleWeapon) for accessing to them but I can not access to them and it returns null because the gameObject is not active. I was shocked when I saw GameObject.FindWithTag doesn’t work on inactive Objects. what Should I do to access my inactive weapon? thanks for help in advance.

3

Leave them enabled in the editor, get them with Start() and after you have them disable them.

You could also try making 4 public gameObjects and just drag your weapons in there.

private void Start()
	{
		weapon = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("tag");
		weapon.SetActive (false);
	}
2

You should have a pre-defined array with the weapons or a list if you want to add more in the future, i think it’s better than always using any GameObject.Find

4

I know this is an old thread, but i stumble over tihis problem once in a while. My best practice is to have a top object with the tag and only deactivate the the child(s).