UI Health jumps into the negative thousands. What Am I doing incorrectly?

[danebutler]

I have the following to scripts. One is attached to the AttackState within the animator, and the other is attached to an empty gameobject called PlayerManager. The goal is when the attack method is called and the player is within a certain spherical distance of the enemy, the player will take damage that is reflected in the UI. The problem is that while all is working, the first time the enemy attacks the player the number flys into the thousands. If I try to use lower case playerManager to utilize the reference to the instance, I get an error. I’m new to this whole thing obviously, so any help on implementing a method that keeps the core of this intact I’d appreciate it.

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

public class PlayerManager : MonoBehaviour
{
    public static int playerHP = 100;
    public TextMeshProUGUI playerHPText;
    public static bool isGameOver;

    void Start()
    {
       
    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {
        playerHPText.text = "+" + playerHP;
        if (isGameOver)
        {
            //display game over screen
        }
       
    }

    public static void TakeDamage(int damageAmount)
    {
        playerHP -= damageAmount;
        if (playerHP <= 0)
            isGameOver = true;
    }
}

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

public class AttackState : StateMachineBehaviour
{
    Transform player;
    PlayerManager playerManager;
    public float radius = 3;
    public int damageAmount = 15;

    // OnStateEnter is called when a transition starts and the state machine starts to evaluate this state
    override public void OnStateEnter(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
    {
        player = GameObject.FindGameObjectWithTag("Player").transform;
        playerManager = player.GetComponent<PlayerManager>();
    }

    // OnStateUpdate is called on each Update frame between OnStateEnter and OnStateExit callbacks
    override public void OnStateUpdate(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
    {
        animator.transform.LookAt(player);
        float distance = Vector3.Distance(player.position, animator.transform.position);

       

        if (distance > 3.5f)
            animator.SetBool("isAttacking", false);

        Collider[] colliders = Physics.OverlapSphere(animator.transform.position, radius);
        foreach (Collider nearbyObject in colliders)
        {
            PlayerManager.TakeDamage(damageAmount);
        }


    }

    // OnStateExit is called when a transition ends and the state machine finishes evaluating this state
    override public void OnStateExit(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
    {

    }

    // OnStateMove is called right after Animator.OnAnimatorMove()
    //override public void OnStateMove(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
    //{
    //    // Implement code that processes and affects root motion
    //}

    // OnStateIK is called right after Animator.OnAnimatorIK()
    //override public void OnStateIK(Animator animator, AnimatorStateInfo stateInfo, int layerIndex)
    //{
    //    // Implement code that sets up animation IK (inverse kinematics)
    //}
}

[Kurt-Dekker]

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.

[kdgalla]

Most likely TakeDamage is getting called more often than you expect. Just skimming your code, it looks like you are calling take damage on the player every frame and once for every nearby collider. You should use debug.log to find out what these colliders are and whether it makes sense that the player should be damaged from them.