Start a timer when the scene is (re)loaded

Questions & Answers
1

Hello fellow Unity users
I’m currently working on a car game, I have two scenes (a main menu and a game) and I would like to have a timer on my main game HUD.
My main menu contains a PLAY button that loads the next scene, and my game contains a pause menu with a RESTART button that reloads the scene in order to restart the level from the beginning.

public void RestartGame() //This is the button that restarts the level
    {
        Time.timeScale = 1.0f;   //this is so that the level isn't paused when the scene is reloaded
        SceneManager.LoadScene(SceneManager.GetActiveScene().buildIndex);
    }

The timer is supposed to be started by a Manager script given below. I want the timer to start as soon as the scene is loaded or reloaded, and to stop whenever the cube has travelled forward 50 units.

    using System.Collections;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using UnityEngine;
    
    public class Manager : MonoBehaviour
    {
        [SerializeField]
        private TimerController timerController;
    
        [SerializeField]
        private MovingCube cube;
    
        void Start()
        {
            timerController.BeginTimer();
        }
    
        // Update is called once per frame
        void Update()
        {
            if (cube.transform.position.z > 50)
            {
                timerController.EndTimer();
            }
        }
    }

Below is the TimerController script used to display the time on the HUD :

using System;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using TMPro;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.UI;

public class TimerController : MonoBehaviour
{
    public static TimerController instance;

    [SerializeField]
    private TMP_Text timeCounter;

    private TimeSpan timePlaying;
    private bool timerGoing;

    private float elapsedTime;

    private void Awake()
    {
        instance = this;    
    }

    void Start()
    {
        timeCounter.text = "00:00.00";
        timerGoing = false;
    }

    public void BeginTimer()
    {
        timerGoing = true;
        elapsedTime = 0f;

        StartCoroutine(UpdateTimer());
    }

    public void EndTimer()
    {
        timerGoing = false;
    }

    private IEnumerator UpdateTimer()
    {
        while (timerGoing)
        {
            elapsedTime += Time.deltaTime;
            timePlaying = TimeSpan.FromSeconds(elapsedTime);
            string timePlayingStr = timePlaying.ToString("m':'ss'.'fff");
            timeCounter.text = timePlayingStr;

            yield return null;
        }
    }
}

I don’t get why my timer won’t start, I tried to change the Manager script and use Awake or OnEnable but it didn’t work… I sometimes manage to get the timer to start once but never when I reload the scene…
I used scripts I found online for the TimerController so there might be better ways to create a timer

Any ideas ?
Thanks, Guillaume

2

Could be because the Start of the Manager is called before the Start of TimerController.
Move everything from Start to Awake in TimerController.
You could also change the ExecutionOrder of scripts in the settings.