How to access differents things through scripts (basic question)...

Scripting
1

Hey,

i have a big issue with understanding the organization of component and object organisation inside unity and how to access different things through script. I have to say i dont have a programmer background, so i am pretty new to C#… please be gentle :slight_smile:

I have a Gameobject i want to use as a prefab which can be instanced through script later on. So i try to organize all its functions in a script i attach to the Gameobject.
you can see the hirarchy in the screenshot i attached. there is the 3d-modell, the infotext and the light. On the Gameobject itself there is a collider as a trigger.
Now i want to make some very easy things:

  1. on start the light and the text get disabled.
  2. when entering the trigger, i want to enable the text and the light.

so from what i have understood so far, every child-object of my “picture” is a gameobject for itself. Functions and Scripts are Components. Both can be enabled and disabled.

So, is it preferable to make a single script on the parent object, which tries to access all components of the child-object?
Or is it better to make little scipts on the child-objects, which the script on the parent-object is accessing?

In my Case:
do i make a light-script attached to the light, a text-script for the info-text both with public methods and a script on the picture-object which controlls the scripts on the childs?

i hope you get my point…

i try it like this but getting errors. Please help me to understand clean accessing of different parameters…

    private GameObject infoText;
    private Light myLight;

    void Awake(){

        myLight = Transform.Find ("Spotlight").GetComponent<Light> ();
        infoText = Transform.Find ("Infotext");

    }

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2

This video may help. (Or it might not, I’ve had mixed reviews on it.)

Anyway the basic idea to get a variable on another script is as follows.

  • Get a reference to the GameObject the script is on
  • Use GetComponent to get a reference to the script
  • Use . to access the variable

The first one is the trickiest. Find is fine when you are starting out. But you’ll want to move onto more sophisticated methods pretty soon.

3

Usually you should try to decouple modules as much as possible, according to the complexity of the actions.
You said right, you can make a Parent empty GameObject and put light and infoText under it.
This way you can drag and drop references from the inspector instead of using Transform.Find that can be a bit expensive.
In this case, I would make a script like ItemInteraction.cs and i would put this code inside.
(Remember to set light and infotext public so you can drag and drop them).

public GameObject infoText;
public GameObject myLight;
void Start(){
        myLight.SetActive(false);
        infoText.SetActive(false);
}
void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other) {
       // do something with collider...
       myLight.SetActive(true);
       infoText.SetActive(true);
}
void OnTriggerExit(Collider other) {
       // do something with collider...
       myLight.SetActive(false);
       infoText.SetActive(false);
}

Hope you find this usefull.

Cheers

4

many thanks for the replys. i will work them through and try to progress. thanks mates! :slight_smile:

AH, i got the point!!! when i make the gameobject public inside the script and drag it out of the game-object-hirarchy, it stays when i drag it in my project explorer as a prefab?
i will try that after breakfast. many many thanks! :slight_smile:

5

man, thanks, good video

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