turning on spotlight

Unity Engine
1

Hi, I am new to Unity, and am trying to turn on a spotlight when I hold down the left mouse button and then when I release the button, the light should turn off again.

code I have right now:

var SpLight : Light;
    
    function Start(){
    SpLight.active = false;
    }
    
    function Update (){
    
        if(Input.GetMouseButtonDown(0)){
        SpLight.active = true;
        }
        else
        {
        SpLight.active = false;
        }
    }

Also the spotlight is a child of the main camera of the first person controller.

When I playtest, spotlight is off but when holding down the mouse button nothing happens.

2

GetMouseButtonDown only returns true for one frame, when you first press it. Use GetMouseButton to continuously return true.

3 
var SpLight: Light;

function Update() { 

 if(Input.GetButtonDown("Fire1"))
Down();
 if(Input.GetButtonUp("Fire1"))
Up();
} 

function Up(){
print("Up");
 SpLight.enabled =false; 
}

function Down(){
print("Down");
 SpLight.enabled = true; 
}

Thats one version of what you want. I find it a bit easier to understand if I farm out functions from the update zone. If I do too much inside the Update function,(Ie all happening in one frame) things get confusing. I dont know if my method is an ideal way, but hey it works…

HTH
AC

4

Thanks Targos for the help. Is there a difference between ‘enabled’ and ‘active’?

5

If you look in the inspector window, active=false; is like turning of the top checkbox, and everything is off, so scripts on this object wont work and scripts referncing this object will throw null reference errors.

enabled = false is in this case turning off the light component only- We specified light in the script we wrote- (it has is own checkbox in the inspector), so scripts will still exectute and the other components are still functional…

Follow?
Cheers
AC