Sendmessage - return value

Questions & Answers
1

Situation:
I’m making a base class from which other classes inherite function, etc. This classes have all different names(of courcse)

Problem:
Now I want to call a function(let’s say “SuperFunction()” ) and get a value from it. The script should return the first component that has a GetAmmo() function in it. Is this possible?

2

You can use Interfaces to ensure a common interface that all your weapons have to provide. Your class is still derived from MonoBehaviour but in addition you implement an interface. You can use GetComponent() to get a reference to your attached weapon script.

public interface IWeapon
{
    int GetAmmo();
}

public class MyBaseClass : MonoBehaviour
{
}

public class Shotgun : MyBaseClass,IWeapon
{
    public int GetAmmo()
    {
        return 5; // :D implement it as you need it
    }
}

Somewhere else:

MyBaseClass[] list = GetComponents<MyBaseClass>();
foreach(MyBaseClass O in list)
{
    if (O is IWeapon)
    {
        // Yeah, it's a weapon
        IWeapon weapon = (IWeapon)O;
        weapon.GetAmmo();
    }
}

edit

I was wrong about GetComponent. You can use it also on interfaces, thanks Mike. So it's possible to get the attached weapon only be the common used interface:

IWeapon weapon = GetComponent(typeof(IWeapon)) as IWeapon;
if (weapon != null)
    weapon.GetAmmo();

Unfortunately Unity put a constraint on the generic parameter so you can use it only for types that are derived from Component. Here's the implementation:

public T GetComponent<T>() where T : Component
{
    return this.GetComponent(typeof(T)) as T;
}

Maybe they remove the constraint (where T : Component) in the future. That wouldn't hurt much but it would help to use interfaces ;)