Issue with game objects swapping in/out

Unity Engine
1

Hey there :sweat_smile: Attached will be a super short video to save on typing paragraphs. Only 2 of my 3 rockets swap in/out, doesn’t seem to acknowledge the 3rd one “Nuke” after crossing the z rotation threshold. Is it my (rather primitive) if-statements?

Appreciate any helpful pointers! :sweat_smile::sweat_smile::sweat_smile:

2

Welcome to debugging. Here’s how to get started:

You must find a way to get the information you need in order to reason about what the problem is.

Once you understand what the problem is, you may begin to reason about a solution to the problem.

What is often happening in these cases is one of the following:

  • the code you think is executing is not actually executing at all
  • the code is executing far EARLIER or LATER than you think
  • the code is executing far LESS OFTEN than you think
  • the code is executing far MORE OFTEN than you think
  • the code is executing on another GameObject than you think it is
  • you’re getting an error or warning and you haven’t noticed it in the console window

To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling Debug.Log() statements through your code to display information in realtime.

Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:

  • is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run? what order does it run in?
  • what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized? Are the values reasonable?
  • are you meeting ALL the requirements to receive callbacks such as triggers / colliders (review the documentation)

Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.

You can also supply a second argument to Debug.Log() and when you click the message, it will highlight the object in scene, such as Debug.Log("Problem!",this);

If your problem would benefit from in-scene or in-game visualization, Debug.DrawRay() or Debug.DrawLine() can help you visualize things like rays (used in raycasting) or distances.

You can also call Debug.Break() to pause the Editor when certain interesting pieces of code run, and then study the scene manually, looking for all the parts, where they are, what scripts are on them, etc.

You can also call GameObject.CreatePrimitive() to emplace debug-marker-ish objects in the scene at runtime.

You could also just display various important quantities in UI Text elements to watch them change as you play the game.

If you are running a mobile device you can also view the console output. Google for how on your particular mobile target, such as this answer or iOS: How To - Capturing Device Logs on iOS or this answer for Android: How To - Capturing Device Logs on Android

Another useful approach is to temporarily strip out everything besides what is necessary to prove your issue. This can simplify and isolate compounding effects of other items in your scene or prefab.

Here’s an example of putting in a laser-focused Debug.Log() and how that can save you a TON of time wallowing around speculating what might be going wrong:

When in doubt, print it out!™

Note: the print() function is an alias for Debug.Log() provided by the MonoBehaviour class.

How to report your problem productively in the Unity3D forums:

http://plbm.com/?p=220

This is the bare minimum of information to report:

  • what you want
  • what you tried
  • what you expected to happen
  • what actually happened, especially any errors you see
    - links to documentation you used to cross-check your work (CRITICAL!!!)
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3

Inside your update function do: Debug.Log(transform.rotation.z). Then click the console tab and hit play and test.

That should help to solve the issue :slight_smile:

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4

Thank you! Yep can’t believe I didn’t consider good ol’ Debug.Log() ! Appreciate the additional recourses also :smile: Almost forgot, it works now!

5

It most certainly DID! Thank you sir, I misunderstood the z rotation coordinates thinking they were bigger numbers in the 10’s, but Debug.Log() showed we were working with mere decimals lol. Appreciate the help!

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6

Sounds like you’re manipulating the internal z of a quaternion. That might work but only just by chance.

rotation.z is NOT an angle

rotation.eulerAngles.z IS an angle, subject to the following limitations:

All about Euler angles and rotations, by StarManta:

https://starmanta.gitbooks.io/unitytipsredux/content/second-question.html

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7

This seems quite pivotal to my progression in dev’ing. Thank you for the clarifications on Euler angles & rotations, Kurt! :sunglasses::sunglasses:

1 Like