Unity Drag and Drop snap to original position

I am implementing drag and drop for a 2d boardgame. Pieces that are dragged by the player to invalid areas should snap back to the position of the original parent object, but instead snap to a position well outside the rendered canvas area.

Player pieces and the allowed drop zones each have their own layer.

For example, an object originating at (310.05, 409.00, 0.00). will be snapped to the position (-244.40, 410.00, 0.00) after a bad drop. It will however, correctly reattach to it’s parent.

How can I fix this behavior? Is there something else I am over looking?

public class DragAndDrop : MonoBehaviour
{

    public GameObject Canvas;
    private bool isDragging = false;
    private bool isOverDropZone = false;
    private bool isDraggable = true;
    private GameObject dropZone;
    private Vector3 origin;
    private GameObject startParent;

    private void Start()
    {
        Canvas = GameObject.Find("Canvas");
 
    }
    void Update()
    {
        if (isDragging)
        {
            transform.position = new Vector2(Input.mousePosition.x, Input.mousePosition.y);
            transform.SetParent(Canvas.transform, true);
        }
    }

    private void OnCollisionEnter2D(Collision2D collision)
    {
        // cards should only collide with a drop zone so that they cannot simply be placed anywhere on the board
        isOverDropZone = true;
        dropZone = collision.gameObject;
    }

    private void OnCollisionExit2D(Collision2D collision)
    {
        isOverDropZone = false;
        dropZone = null;
    }

    /**
     * 
     * //TODO: what is the bug here? They parent correctly, but are snapped not back to the original pos, but some random pos outside the rendered canvas area. . .
     * 
     * StartDrag and EndDrag are called by the event detector component registered on the gameobject. 
     * Cards should snap back to the hand area if they are not placed in a dropzone.
     * 
     */
    public void StartDrag()
    {
        //if the gameobject is draggable, store the parent and position of it so we know where to return it if it isn't put in a dropzone
        if (!isDraggable) return;
        origin = gameObject.transform.position;
        startParent = transform.parent.gameObject;
        isDragging = true;
    }

    public void EndDrag()
    {
        if (!isDraggable) return;
        isDragging = false;

        //if the gameobject is put in a dropzone, set it as a child of the dropzone
        if (isOverDropZone)
        {
            transform.SetParent(dropZone.transform, false);
            isDraggable = false;
        }       
        //otherwise, send it to the hand area
        else
        {
            transform.position = origin;
            transform.SetParent(startParent.transform, false);
        }
    }
}

Seems pretty straightforward to debug it… here’s how!

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 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.

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.

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

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:

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