Unity3 doesn't seem to know my prefab exists.

Unity Engine
1

Hello all,
This is my first post / question here and I’m sure there will be many more. I’ve been using Unity for a while now and have figured out everything on my own ( with some help from these forums ), but now I’ve been stuck on a few things for a little while now that I haven’t been able to figured out.

I have several prefabs that I use for spells in my game. Fireball, lightning bolt, freeze etc. I have particle emitters and scripts attached to each. I have a variable called currentSpell which is of type Transform. Any time I try to assign any of the prefabs to this varible – through code – I get no error in the editor, but the prefab doesn’t get assigned. I can see that in the inspector after I assign it. It never changes and the following code bombs;

this.currentSpell = GetComponent(“LightningBoldPrefab”);
var lbp : Transform = Instantiate(currentSpell, transform.position, transform.rotation);

If the try the following line

this.currentSpell = GetComponent(LightningBoldPrefab);

or even this.currentSpell = LightningBoldPrefab; (which I knew wouldn’t work anyway)

I get “Unknown identifier: ‘LightningBoldPrefab’”

I have several little issues I’m trying to work through on my own, but this one has me totally stumped. Any help saving my sanity would be greatly appreciated :smile:

2

Well firstly, by explicitly saying currentSpell is of type transform, LightningBoltPrefab must be too, although it is a prefab, which is a GameObject. Also, your code/explanation doesn’t make much sense : /. Not to me at least. When you instantiate something you create it, but in the line before that you use GetComponent which means it should already be a part of the current gameObject…? If it isn’t already part of the current object, then GetComponent will return null and in turn currentSpell = null. So your problem is really that you’re trying to use GetComponent when it isn’t a component of the current gameObject, it’s a prefab that hasn’t been referenced anywhere.

One option would be to have an array of GameObjects, call it spells.
spells : GameObject[ ];
Fill this in the inspector with your spell prefabs in a known desired order, and when you want to instantiate each just Instantiate(spells*, …), when i = the index of the spell you want. Does this help? Check the Docs on GetComponent and Instantiate. Let me know if that helps lol.*

3

I hope it isn’t just a misspelling of “LightningBoltPrefab”. Actually, that would be pretty funny.

4

I would bet my chicken plush it is grins

5

Actually the post was a typo :slight_smile: Not sure what the heck I was thinking when I typed that up, but I went back to the code and double check just to make sure :slight_smile: The actual code is correct.

Thanks, enragedmrt. Your direction was what I needed, in this case. I was under the impression that GetComponent() by itself would get a reference to an object that wasn’t attached to anything. Just pull it from the project and after Instantiate() be able to access it. I was wrong :slight_smile: Now I understand it better after your explanation followed by re-reading the docs on it.

On to tackle my next issue.