What is the best way to find the item underneath the player?

Questions & Answers
1

Alright, so here’s the deal: I have a fantabulous butterfly that has a trigger collider underneath. There will be items on the ground and when they are in the collider, and the player hits the spacebar I want the item in the collider to be picked up (Vector3 grabLocation = transform.localPosition; grabLocation.y -= 2; target.transform.position = grabLocation;) by the butterfly. Can some godly C# expert emerge from the coding heavens and explain how I can tell the butterfly which item to pick up. Please.

2

You would have to think of interface or abstract class (or base class…).

public abstract class ICollectible:MonoBehaviour{
     public abstract void Collect();
}

All collectible items should inherit from that class and implement the collect method.

This way you can do:

private List<ICollectible> collectibles = new List<ICollectible>();
private void OnTriggerEnter(Collider col)
{
     var col = col.gameObject.GetComponent<ICollectible>();
     if(col != null){
           this.collectible.Add(col);
     }
}
private void OnTriggerEnter(Collider col)
{
     var col = col.gameObject.GetComponent<ICollectible>();
     if(col != null){
           this.collectible.Add(col);
     }
}
private void OnTriggerEnter(Collider col)
{
     var col = col.gameObject.GetComponent<ICollectible>();
     if(col != null){
           this.collectible.Add(col);
     }
}
 
private void OnTriggerExit(Collider col)
{
     var col = col.gameObject.GetComponent<ICollectible>();
     if(col != null){
           this.collectible.Remove(col);
     }
}

private void Update(){
      if(input.getKeyDown(KeyCode.Space)){
             foreach(ICollectible col in collectibles){
                    col.Collect();
             }
             collectibles.Clear();
      }
}

So when an item enters the collider, if it is a ICollectible it is added to the list and when it exist it is removed. When the user presses space, all items in the list are called Collect. Because they have to implement Collect for being ICollectible, you can make them do different things, for instance if a speed item or a weapon item they will implement Collect differently and the compiler will just do it right.