Missing reference exception

Questions & Answers
1

I’ve been reading though the forums, and haven’t found anything that points to my particular issue… this is seriously killing me. I get this message in the console:
“MissingReferenceException: The variable strafeleft of ‘Asteroidlvl10’ doesn’t exist anymore.
You probably need to reassign the strafeleft variable of the ‘Asteroidlvl10’ script in the inspector.
UnityEngine.Transform.get_localPosition ()
Asteroidlvl10.Update () (at Assets/Scripts/Asteroidlvl10.js:98)”

here is the snippet of code that it points too:

	if(Input.GetButton("a"))
		{
			mark = 0;
			speed = (movespeed/100) * distance;
			movedirection = strafeleft.localPosition * distance;
			movedirection.y = -12;
			movedirection.x = movedirection.x * 10;
			movedirection.z = movedirection.z * 10;
			transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position,  movedirection, speed*Time.deltaTime);
			timerdrift = speed;
			speed1 = speed;			
		}

I have created an asteroid prefab, and added a strafeleft empty gameobject to my ship. this is also a prefab. when the game starts asteroids are instantiated infront of the ship off screen. They fly past the screen based on the speed dictated in another line of script. The problem is that when the a key is depressed instead of the asteroid moving towards the strafeleft position it complains that the refernce doesn’t exist. in the instantiated clones of the asteroid prefab the gameobject strafeleft is missing. I assure you that the reference was made between the two prefabs and the prefabs are still intact in the project window. for the life of me I can’t figure out why the asteroid prefab drops strafeleft, but doesn’t drop any of the other references including ship which is a gameobject reference for the parent of strafeleft.

I hope that makes sense, but I really need help with this one. I’ve been messing with it for a couple of days and can’t figure it out.

2

you may want to use error checking, for missing reference it is

catch(MissingReferenceException)

then find the game object again

strafeleft = GameObject.Find("StrafeLeft");
continue;

If it doesn’t find it then it was probably deleted from the scene somehow, maybe one of the scripts did it by accident. You may need the continue there to continue the script after that part is done, but that’s only if there is things after that part you need.

You’re also going to have to put a try over input part, it should look something like this:

try
   {
   if(Input.GetButton("a"))
        {
         mark = 0;
         speed = (movespeed/100) * distance;
         movedirection = strafeleft.localPosition * distance;
         movedirection.y = -12;
         movedirection.x = movedirection.x * 10;
         movedirection.z = movedirection.z * 10;
         transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(transform.position,  movedirection, speed*Time.deltaTime);
         timerdrift = speed;
         speed1 = speed;            
        }
   }
catch (MissingReferenceException)
   {
   strafeleft = GameObject.Find("StrafeLeft");
   continue;
   }