Need help with delaying my script

I need help delaying my script for an elevator, I keep trying to find ways but they don’t make much sense. I’m new to coding. I know that most likely this isn’t the way to go about it I just want it to first execute the Section of Elevatorup then wait and then execute ElevatorDown.

public class Elevator : MonoBehaviour
{
    public Transform target;
    public Transform target2;
    public float t;
    public float speed;
    public float DelayAmount = 5f;
    // Update is called once per frame
   
    void start()
    {
        Invoke("Elevatorup", DelayAmount);
        Invoke("ElevatorDown", DelayAmount);
    }
   
    void Elevatorup()
    {
        Vector3 a = transform.position;
        Vector3 b = target.position;
        transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(a, b, speed);
    }
    void ElevatorDown()
    {
        Vector3 a = transform.position;
        Vector3 c = target2.position;
        transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(a, c, speed);
    }
}

I use my CallAfterDelay class for delayed action, anytime I need to “do something later.”

See usage notes at bottom below gist code.

void start()

This is not a message that exists in Unity and Unity will not run this automatically. Use an actual message such as Start if you want it to run.

1 Like

You are telling both things to happen at the same time, so I would assume that elevator looks like it’s in a earthquake, lol. But a simple example would just be something like:

Invoke("Elevatorup", DelayAmount);
Invoke("ElevatorDown", DelayAmount * 2);

Or even just don’t have a wait on the first one. But calling this in Start() makes no sense, unless you’re just playing around with it. So all good

Yeah, looking at this more, this is going to do nothing whatsoever elevator-like.

Start with tutorials. There are a LOT of distinct parts to an elevator, including action-over-time type parts.

Tutorials and example code are great, but keep this in mind to maximize your success and minimize your frustration:

How to do tutorials properly, two (2) simple steps to success:

Step 1. Follow the tutorial and do every single step of the tutorial 100% precisely the way it is shown. Even the slightest deviation (even a single character!) generally ends in disaster. That’s how software engineering works. Every step must be taken, every single letter must be spelled, capitalized, punctuated and spaced (or not spaced) properly, literally NOTHING can be omitted or skipped.
Fortunately this is the easiest part to get right: Be a robot. Don’t make any mistakes.
BE PERFECT IN EVERYTHING YOU DO HERE!!

If you get any errors, learn how to read the error code and fix your error. Google is your friend here. Do NOT continue until you fix your error. Your error will probably be somewhere near the parenthesis numbers (line and character position) in the file. It is almost CERTAINLY your typo causing the error, so look again and fix it.

Step 2. Go back and work through every part of the tutorial again, and this time explain it to your doggie. See how I am doing that in my avatar picture? If you have no dog, explain it to your house plant. If you are unable to explain any part of it, STOP. DO NOT PROCEED. Now go learn how that part works. Read the documentation on the functions involved. Go back to the tutorial and try to figure out WHY they did that. This is the part that takes a LOT of time when you are new. It might take days or weeks to work through a single 5-minute tutorial. Stick with it. You will learn.

Step 2 is the part everybody seems to miss. Without Step 2 you are simply a code-typing monkey and outside of the specific tutorial you did, you will be completely lost. If you want to learn, you MUST do Step 2.

Of course, all this presupposes no errors in the tutorial. For certain tutorial makers (like Unity, Brackeys, Imphenzia, Sebastian Lague) this is usually the case. For some other less-well-known content creators, this is less true. Read the comments on the video: did anyone have issues like you did? If there’s an error, you will NEVER be the first guy to find it.

Beyond that, Step 3, 4, 5 and 6 become easy because you already understand!

Finally, when you have errors, don’t post here… just go fix your errors! Here’s how:

Remember: NOBODY here memorizes error codes. That’s not a thing. The error code is absolutely the least useful part of the error. It serves no purpose at all. Forget the error code. Put it out of your mind.

The complete error message contains everything you need to know to fix the error yourself.

The important parts of the error message are:

  • the description of the error itself (google this; you are NEVER the first one!)
  • the file it occurred in (critical!)
  • the line number and character position (the two numbers in parentheses)
  • also possibly useful is the stack trace (all the lines of text in the lower console window)

Always start with the FIRST error in the console window, as sometimes that error causes or compounds some or all of the subsequent errors. Often the error will be immediately prior to the indicated line, so make sure to check there as well.

Look in the documentation. Every API you attempt to use is probably documented somewhere. Are you using it correctly? Are you spelling it correctly?

All of that information is in the actual error message and you must pay attention to it. Learn how to identify it instantly so you don’t have to stop your progress and fiddle around with the forum.

1 Like

hey thanks, yeah I kept on deleting retyping following tutorial after tutorial trying to get things to work. thanks, wouldn’t have seen the mistake myself

Just outta curiosity, would this work(the ideas is that its not so much a controlable elevator but an up and down moving platform) I figure it calls the one after the other as a sort of makeshift loop.(my mind sometimes just trys ideas wether they are good are not, and am not sure where to peg this one)

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class Elevator : MonoBehaviour
{
    public Transform target;
    public Transform target2;
    public float t;
    public float speed;
    public float DelayAmount = 5f;
    // Update is called once per frame
  
    void Start()
    {
        Invoke("Elevatorup", DelayAmount);
    }
  
    void Elevatorup()
    {
        Vector3 a = transform.position;
        Vector3 b = target.position;
        transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(a, b, speed);
        Invoke("ElevatorDown", DelayAmount);
    }
    void ElevatorDown()
    {
        Vector3 a = transform.position;
        Vector3 c = target2.position;
        transform.position = Vector3.MoveTowards(a, c, speed);
        Invoke("Elevatorup", DelayAmount);
    }
}

nevermind, just teleports between these two states

Start with a simple timer:

int timer;

void Update()
{
   timer++;
   int duration = 30;
   if (timer < duration) { ElevatorUp(); }
   else if (timer < duration * 2) { ElevatorDown(); } 
   else { timer = 0; }
}

And just have simple movement in your up/down functions.

Once you get a feel for how everything works, then start playing around with duration, moveSpeed, and or position stops. :slight_smile:

For smooth movement over time, try this pattern:

Smoothing movement between any two particular values:

You have currentQuantity and desiredQuantity.

  • only set desiredQuantity (eg, “Elevator, go to floor X now.”)
  • the code always moves currentQuantity towards desiredQuantity
  • read currentQuantity for the smoothed value (you would use this to position the elevator)

Works for floats, Vectors, Colors, Quaternions, anything continuous or lerp-able.

The code: SmoothMovement.cs · GitHub

Another approach would be to use a tweening package such as LeanTween, DOTween or iTween.