List or Arrays, and how to randomize them.

Question

I'm currently in a pickle, and I think writing it out and getting some advice is what I need. I have a pretty specific question it seems, and I only am more discouraged when trying to find answers, so here it goes-

The goal of the script that I want to create is a list or array of gameobjects ( or strings) that I can then use to randomly decide which order they will activate and when. For example, the player has 3 tasks they need to complete, task 1, task 2, task 3. I want to randomly pick which order the tasks come in. This way the player is not doing the taks in the same order.

I haven't worked with arrays or lists to know if I am able to do this. I was hoping for some general guidance on how to structure this. I don't have any code specific to this, but I would appreciate any guidance.

My thoughts were that I would be able to store the tasks as strings or gameobjects and have the script select them and store the order in variables, then when I need to reshuffle the tasks, overwrite those variables. However, I'm not sure how to put that in practice. Thanks!

Answer 1

Good day.

You want to pick random elements from an array, correct?

Then you need to do 2 things, one, learn to pick a random elemnt, and learn how to check if that element was already picked.

you have this array of 5 Gameobjects:

 GameObject[] MyArray = new GameObject[5]

If i want the 1st element of the array (index = 0)i do dins

 MyArray[0]

The 3rd element;

 Myarray[2]

So, if i want a random element, i need to do this:

 int RandomNumber = Random.Range(0,MyArray.Lenght)
 MyArray[RandomNumber]

So you will get a random element from ( 0 ) to (lenght of the array).

This is the 1st part.

As Random.Range doesn't know what elements are already selected, you need to check if the Random.Range is selecting a neew element.

So you should create a bool array, to know if a element has been selected.

 bool[] ConfirmationArray = new bool [MyArray.Lenght];

Every time, and element is selected, i will change to true the bool variable in the confirmation array.

 int RandomNumber = Random.Range(0,MyArray.Lenght)
 while (ConfirmationArray[RandomNumber] == true)
 { 
 RandomNumber = Random.Range(0,MyArray.Lenght)
 } // this while will make a randim number until it is a "new" number
 
 something = MyArray[RandomNumber]
 ConfirmationArray[RandomNumber] = true; // So it will not be picked again

If didnt understand something, goread some manual, API apges, youtube, etc..

Bye!

List or Arrays, and how to randomize them.

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