Design Advice: Power Up System (static variables?)

Question

hey there,

I have a game in progress in which the player can fly around in 3d space and shoot weapons. I have various variables for the player like: movement speed, rate of fire, damage, hit points etc. I would like to create a system of powerups to modify these variables as the player's score increases.

I have a static variable for score in a game object that manages global stats. The player variables are on various game objects as children of the main player object.

I am trying to decide whether it makes more sense to write code for the changes into each script which controls the player variable (like put different power up modifiers in the gun script for example) and then have those check a static variable in the global stats to turn them on or off, or whether I should try to track all that in the global stats object and just set the different variables to new values from that object.

I guess the heart of the matter is: will I be better off having many scripts checking a static variable or variables as to the players state of progress or should I have my object tracking score linked to all the weapons etc and modifying their variables from logic inside the score tracking script? Hope the question is clear.

I know this is more of a design question than a strict scripting question, but I feel like the decision I make here will have wide ranging consequences including how organized my scripts are and for overall performance and wanted to seek some advice.

thanks in advance! M.

Answer 1

Best Answer

Answer by Fattie · Mar 14, 2014 at 07:37 AM

This entire issue is

INCREDIBLY OUT OF DATE.

it is honestly just this simple:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/35891919/294884

THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO IT.

IT IS ABSOLUTELY TRIVIAL.

Here, I'll paste in the latest version of Grid.cs we are using.

Many shops are using this.

It is extremely important to realize that

the ONLY point of using Grid.cs is to save you typing ONE line of code.

It is purely syntactic sugar. (It also gives a tiny, tiny performance advantage.)

Grid.cs is great, but don't be confused it is ONLY syntactic sugar.

See the short article above.

If you want to use Grid it is this simple:

 /*
 1. first read this or you are HUGELY WASTING YOUR TIME:
 http://stackoverflow.com/a/35891919/294884
 
 
 NOTE - as of 2016, the clowns at Unity have forgotten to include
 a preload scene as a built-in concept in Unity projects.
 Obviously, every single project needs a preload scene.
 
 Until they have a brain fart and finally add a preload scene
 to Unity projects, just add one yourself.
 
 The entire point of the preload scene is simply to hold
 any persistent things like sound effects, which you need to
 access everywhere. It's that simple. Couldn't be easier.
 There's nothing more to it than that.
 
 
 2. have your preload scene, say "_preload"
 
 3. have one GameObject, say "_app", in that scene.
 put a script on "_app" with DontDestroyOnLoad
 
 4. in the example, put your classes
 Voiceover, Sfx, Music, Scoring on "_app"
 
 ************ NOTE ************
 ************ NOTE ************
 
 The >>>ONLY POINT<<< of using Grid is to save you typing
 >>>ONE<<< LINE OF CODE. Honestly in 99% of cases it's easier
 just to type the >>>ONE<<< line of code. Read:
 http://stackoverflow.com/a/35891919/294884
 */
 
 static class Grid
   {
   public static Voiceover voiceover;
   public static Sfx sfx;
   public static Music music;
   public static Scoring scoring;
   
   static Grid()
     {
     GameObject g = safeFind("__app");
     
     sfx = (Sfx)SafeComponent( g, "Sfx" );
     voiceover = (Voiceover)SafeComponent( g, "Voiceover" );
     music = (Music)SafeComponent( g, "Music" );
     scoring = (Scoring)SafeComponent( g, "Music" );
     }
   
   // when Grid wakes up, it checks everything is in place
   // it uses these trivial routines to do so
   private static GameObject safeFind(string s)
     {
     GameObject g = GameObject.Find(s);
     if (g == null) Woe("GameObject " +s+ "  not on _preload.");
     return g;
     }
   private static Component SafeComponent(GameObject g, string s)
     {
     Component c = g.GetComponent(s);
     if (c == null) Woe("Component " +s+ " not on _preload.");
     return c;
     }
   private static void Woe(string error)
     {
     Debug.Log(">>> Cannot proceed... " +error);
     Debug.Log(">>> It is very likely you just forgot to launch")
     Debug.Log(">>> from scene zero, the _preload scene.");
     }
   
   // be sure to read this:
   // http://stackoverflow.com/a/35891919/294884
   }

Then, anywhere in the project you can say

  Grid.sfx.Explosions();

and so on. Be sure to read this http://stackoverflow.com/a/35891919/294884

Be aware of incredibly out of date discussions on this topic on the web; there are 100s of pages of total crap out there, which is now completely irrelevant.

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mirrorfish · Apr 02, 2014 at 02:08 AM 0

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Just wanted to double back and say that I implemented this system and it's AMAZING!!!!

In addition to being able to fire off whatever functions I wanted from whatever script I also used this to replace a bunch of GetComponent uses where I was passing variables between scripts. By using this setup I've been able to reduce my use of GetComponent by about 80%. Wonderful! I think this aspect of this was actually a way bigger time/headache/efficiency saver for me.

This has really opened a world of usefulness for me.

A few questions:

1) Is the way I'm using this to pass variables back and forth between scripts efficient? Is it Ok to for example put something in an update function that is continuously accessing a variable, for example:

 void  FixedUpdate (){
 speed = Grid.playerAllStats.playerSpeed;
 //do more physics stuff
 }

Actually I ended up finding a better way to script that without putting that in update, but I'm still wondering about how fast this is in general.

2) Do I need to set my __PlayerAllStats and __ProcManagerGrid (for example) objects that are in my preEverythingScene to DontDestroyOnLoad? I did it for one of them but then forgot to do it for my second one and it seemed to work any way. Confusing.

Anyway, thanks again!

mirrorfish · Apr 09, 2014 at 02:23 AM 0

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@Xevoius It gets a little more cumbersome because you have to hit play from the prescene, so you may end up swapping back and forth between scenes as you work.

For my project it hasn't been too much of a problem because I'm working mostly on scripts and prefabs and so I dont need to have that scene open to tweak. I just make changes to the assets with PreScene loaded and then launch the main scene via script. If anyone has a more slick way to handle this though it would be cool.

Fattie · Apr 09, 2014 at 05:37 AM 0

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Hey Mirrorfish!

When you are working in Unity, you always have to go to your loading scene (your scene zero) before hitting play.

It's just how it is working with Unity.

Every Unity project (other than just a test project) will have a "pre-loading" scene.

Here's a very trivial solution to automate "going back to the zero scene" (at the bottom of the page...) http://stackoverflow.com/a/35891919/294884

mirrorfish · Apr 09, 2014 at 11:59 AM 0

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Hey Fattie!

Thanks for the link, that's a great solution!

M.

Xevoius · Apr 13, 2014 at 03:26 PM 0

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Fattie, here is what I believe you have been after.

Game Pre-loading Setup Configuration

1) Add all the persistent objects/components to a Pre-Game Loading Scene

2) Add the Grid and SceneAutoLoader scripts to the project - do not need to be attached to an object Grid Script: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/663351/design-advice-power-up-system-static-variables.html#comment-684020 SceneAutoLoader: http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php/SceneAutoLoader

3) Make sure this has been added to the Grid code:

 #if UNITY_EDITOR
 using UnityEditor;
 #endif
 ...
 //add this below component code
 #if UNITY_EDITOR
         Application.LoadLevel(System.IO.Path.GetFileNameWithoutExtension(EditorPrefs.GetString("SceneAutoLoader.PreviousScene")),true);
 #endif

4) Make sure and wrap the SceneAutoLoader code in this

 #if UNITY_EDITOR 
 ...
 #endif

5) Add the Pre-Game Loader persistent components to the Grid constructor code 6) Reference the Grid at least once in one of the persistent object Start() or Awake() to make sure constructor gets called 7) Add this to all persistent component scripts

 void Awake()
 {
      DontDestroyOnLoad(gameObject);
 }

8) Configure the ScreenAutoLoader File->Scene Autoload menu option to point to my Pre-Game Loading screen

9) Make sure all scenes required have been added to the build

10) Press Play

This automatically reloads the scene you are working on in the editor after the pre-game scene has been loaded.

I want to test the workflow a bit to make sure it is a working solution for me. Then I intend to put together a video on YouTube to give a step by step on how to set your bootstrap scene method up.

Let me know how it goes.

~Cheers

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Design Advice: Power Up System (static variables?)

INCREDIBLY OUT OF DATE

JUST THIS SIMPLE

1 Reply

INCREDIBLY OUT OF DATE.

THERE IS NOTHING MORE TO IT.

IT IS ABSOLUTELY TRIVIAL.

the ONLY point of using Grid.cs is to save you typing ONE line of code.

Grid.cs is great, but don't be confused it is ONLY syntactic sugar.

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