UI flashing to wrong position when reactivating

[Jacktardean]

Hi,

I’m making an inventory system with a hotbar and main inventory.

I’m attempting to get the hotbar to originally be at the bottom, but as the player moves down to the bottom quarter of the screen the hotbar moves to the top. This all works fine, the only issue I’m having is when the inventory is opened, the hot bar then becomes disabled (as planned) but if I am in the bottom quarter of the screen and open the inventory and then close it, it jumps to the bottom and instantly to the top, this happens randomly. See below:

This is in my UIInventoryBar script to handle the inventory bar UI

    public class UIInventoryBar : MonoBehaviour
    {
        private RectTransform rectTransform;
    
        private bool _isInventoryBarPositionBottom = true;
        public bool IsInventoryBarPositionBottom { get => _isInventoryBarPositionBottom; set => _isInventoryBarPositionBottom = value; }
    
        private void Awake()
        {
            rectTransform = GetComponent<RectTransform>();
        }
    
        private void Update()
        {
            SwitchHotBarPosition();
        }
    
        private void SwitchHotBarPosition()
        {
            Vector3 playerViewportPosition = Player.Instance.GetPlayerViewportPosition();
    
            if (playerViewportPosition.y <= 0.25f)
            {
                rectTransform.pivot = new Vector2(0.5f, 0f);
                rectTransform.anchorMin = new Vector2(0.5f, 0f);
                rectTransform.anchorMax = new Vector2(0.5f, 0f);
                rectTransform.anchoredPosition = new Vector2(0f, 318f);
    
                IsInventoryBarPositionBottom = false;
            }
            if (playerViewportPosition.y > 0.25f && IsInventoryBarPositionBottom == false)
            {
                rectTransform.pivot = new Vector2(0.5f, 0f);
                rectTransform.anchorMin = new Vector2(0.5f, 0f);
                rectTransform.anchorMax = new Vector2(0.5f, 0f);
                rectTransform.anchoredPosition = new Vector2(0f, 3f);
    
                IsInventoryBarPositionBottom = true;
            }
        }
    }

This is in my player script to handle the input of toggling the inventory open and closed

        private void Update()
        {
    
            for (int i = 0; i < toggleInventoryKeys.Length; i++)
            {
                if (Input.GetKeyDown(toggleInventoryKeys[i]))
                {
                    inventoryGameobject.SetActive(!inventoryGameobject.activeSelf);
    
                    if (inventoryGameobject.activeInHierarchy)
                    {
                        hotBarGameobject.SetActive(false);
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        hotBarGameobject.SetActive(true);
                    }
                    break;
                }
            }
        }

[Kurt-Dekker]

Probably an order-of-operation issue.

Steps to success:

• get out your Debug.Log() and prove that it actually IS an order-of-operation issue

• fix it by explicitly changing one of your methods to public void MyUpdate(); and calling it from the other function.

Otherwise…

Time to start debugging! Here is how you can begin your exciting new debugging adventures:

You must find a way to get the information you need in order to reason about what the problem is.

Once you understand what the problem is, you may begin to reason about a solution to the problem.

What is often happening in these cases is one of the following:

• the code you think is executing is not actually executing at all
• the code is executing far EARLIER or LATER than you think
• the code is executing far LESS OFTEN than you think
• the code is executing far MORE OFTEN than you think
• the code is executing on another GameObject than you think it is
• you’re getting an error or warning and you haven’t noticed it in the console window

To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling Debug.Log() statements through your code to display information in realtime.

Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:

• is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run? what order does it run in?
• what are the names of the GameObjects or Components involved?
• what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized? Are the values reasonable?
• are you meeting ALL the requirements to receive callbacks such as triggers / colliders (review the documentation)

Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.

You can also supply a second argument to Debug.Log() and when you click the message, it will highlight the object in scene, such as Debug.Log("Problem!",this);

If your problem would benefit from in-scene or in-game visualization, Debug.DrawRay() or Debug.DrawLine() can help you visualize things like rays (used in raycasting) or distances.

You can also call Debug.Break() to pause the Editor when certain interesting pieces of code run, and then study the scene manually, looking for all the parts, where they are, what scripts are on them, etc.

You can also call GameObject.CreatePrimitive() to emplace debug-marker-ish objects in the scene at runtime.

You could also just display various important quantities in UI Text elements to watch them change as you play the game.

Visit Google for how to see console output from builds. If you are running a mobile device you can also view the console output. Google for how on your particular mobile target, such as this answer or iOS: How To - Capturing Device Logs on iOS or this answer for Android: How To - Capturing Device Logs on Android

If you are working in VR, it might be useful to make your on onscreen log output, or integrate one from the asset store, so you can see what is happening as you operate your software.

Another useful approach is to temporarily strip out everything besides what is necessary to prove your issue. This can simplify and isolate compounding effects of other items in your scene or prefab.

Here’s an example of putting in a laser-focused Debug.Log() and how that can save you a TON of time wallowing around speculating what might be going wrong:

Coroutine missing hint and error

This is so unnecessary. Use the beauty and power of instantly and immediately putting a Debug.Log() statement into the very start of the coroutine, right at the top. Do this always at the very first sign of trouble or question in your mind. The instant you did this you would see “Oh man, this code is simply not getting run!” And you could LASER-FOCUS 100% your efforts on studying what you expect to run it, eg., the call location, and isolate why it is not running. You would look at literall…

“When in doubt, print it out!™” - Kurt Dekker (and many others)

Note: the print() function is an alias for Debug.Log() provided by the MonoBehaviour class.

[Jacktardean]

Thank you so much for your detailed response! UnfortunatelyI’ve still been unable to get it working, I’ve used debugs all over and nothing pops ujp, all the codes are ran and when it flashes in the wrong spot, there isn’t a debug to say that element of the code has been ran so I am really stumped.

I have tried changing the priorty of the scripts too to test if its that and I’ve had no joy with that either:/