How to access variables from another script.

Questions & Answers
1

I’ve tried on various occasion for several hours at a time to get access to variables from one script to another, I’ve followed tutorials that have allowed me do this as well as having gone over the documentation on multiple occasions, but I still haven’t managed to figure it out for my own uses. For whatever god awful reason, I just can’t seem to grasp getting information in between scripts unless someone is telling me step by step how to do it.

I have 3 scripts that all work exactly as I need them to, but now I need them to be able to interact. It seems to me that I should be able to somehow call ‘shields.modifyShields’ from the shieldVar script inside DestroyByContact and leave the third script out of it altogether since shieldsVar already only makes its functions happen inside another script called shieldStrength

1)DestroyByContact - A script which watches for collisions and responds accordingly. ((This is actually modified from the ‘Space Shooter’ Unity Tutorial

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class DestroyByContact : MonoBehaviour
{

	public bool shielded;
	public GameObject asterExplode;
	public GameObject explosion;
	public GameObject playerExplosion;
	public int scoreValue;
	private GameController gameController;

	void Start ()
	{		
		GameObject gameControllerObject = GameObject.FindWithTag ("GameController");
		if (gameControllerObject != null) 
		{
			gameController = gameControllerObject.GetComponent <GameController>();
		}
		if (gameController == null) 
		{
			Debug.Log ("Cannot find 'GameController' script");
		}
	}

	void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other)
		{
				if (other.tag == "Boundary") 
					{
						return;
					}
				if (Input.GetButton ("Shield"))
						shielded = (true);
				if (tag == "shieldAble" && shielded == true && other.tag == "Player") {
						Destroy (gameObject);
						gameController.AddScore (scoreValue /2);
						Instantiate (explosion, gameObject.transform.position, gameObject.transform.rotation);
				
						return;
				} else if (other.tag == "Shot" | shielded == true) 
					{
						Instantiate (asterExplode, other.transform.position, other.transform.rotation);
						Destroy (gameObject);
						Destroy (other.gameObject);
						gameController.AddScore (scoreValue);
					}
		else
				{
			Instantiate (playerExplosion, other.transform.position, other.transform.rotation);
				Destroy (other.gameObject);
				gameController.AddScore (scoreValue);
				}

		}
}

2)shieldsVar - A script that was used to generate UI buttons to increase/decrease shield value. I now need to be able to call these functions inside of DestroyByContact so that they execute inside my shieldStrength script on collision

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

public class shieldsVar : MonoBehaviour 
{		

	public shieldStrength shields;

	void OnGUI()
	{
		if (GUI.Button(new Rect(Screen.width/1.5f, Screen.height / 4 + Screen.width / 10 * 0,100,25), "Restore Shield"))
		{
			shields.modifyShields(1);
		}
		if (GUI.Button(new Rect(Screen.width/1.5f, Screen.height / 4 + Screen.width / 10 * 1,100,25), "Take Damage"))
		{
			shields.modifyShields(-1);
		}
		if (GUI.Button(new Rect(Screen.width/1.5f, Screen.height / 4 + Screen.width / 10 * 2,100,25), "Add Shield"))
		{
			shields.AddShields(1);
		}
	}
}
2

Alright! I’m embarrassed that it took me so long to figure out something so simple, but I have it now.

A quick rundown of how I managed it was as follows, hopefully someone in my shoes might find it useful someday:

        using UnityEngine;
        using System.Collections;
            {
            public exactNameOfScript nameOfReference;
            
            void Start (){	
            
            nameOfReference = GameObject.Find ("NameOfObjectThatHasScriptYouWant").GetComponent<exactNameOfScript> ();
            }
}

after this, you access variables from the script you //referenced to by using the dot operator:

“nameOfReference.nameOfVariableInReferencedScript(thingsToDo);”

make sure you put these in your Start function and not an Update function, otherwise you’re eating resources needlessly!

Coming back to edit for future generations: If reasonable, you should tag things you need to reference, rather than using "GameObject.Find (“NameOfObject”), you should use "GameObject.FindWithTag(“NameOfTagYouGaveObjectYouWant”) It saves on time and resources!