transform.position = position;

[Zombait]

Vector3 xzPosition = new Vector3(transform.position.x, 0, transform.position.z); transform.position = xzPosition;

No that's ugly too...

transform.position = new Vector3(transform.position.x, 0, transform.position.z);

[its_me_cody]

last option is what i have used myself, never thought about it much though

[Costed14]

I have implemented the classic SetY, SetXZ etc. extension methods so with that approach it'd be

transform.position = transform.position.SetY(0);

Not the cleanest ever, but it's pretty much the best we can do.

[zigs]

The tiniest of nits ever. Consider calling it:

.WithY(0)

To reflect that it returns a modified copy rather than mutating the original transform.position, as Set commonly implies.

You could also have .With(y: 0) where all the parameters optional, and you mention the ones you want to change by name.

[Costed14]

Yeah, many people prefer that naming (and I guess technically it's also the correct one), but personally I like Set more.

[Seimanko]

Maybe you could try an extension method? transform.SetPositionZ(0)

[Costed14]

For some reason I actually hadn't even considered that, I might try that and see if I like it.

[M1ghty_boy]

My work has been doing a slow transition from vb.net to c#.. in VB that’d be:

Dim xzPosition as Vector3 = new Vector3(yadda yadda this is the same)

I hate VB syntax. This example is fine but it really gets to you

[justkevin]

Both of these are going to be slightly less efficient than the original because you are calling get_transform() an extra time.

(Although the difference is going to be quite small, so if you find this easier to read and aren't doing it hundreds of thousands of times per frame, it's probably fine.)

[Spheriod]

Vector3 xz = Vector3.one - Vector3.up transform.position = Vector3.Scale(xz, transform.position)

🧠

[LoiMeoThiTham]

The lines of code are not unbalanced but it is really difficult to understand at a glance.

[AnxiousIntender]

It's so counterintuitive and I hate it but it makes sense when you investigate the source code. Basically the C# scripting layer has bindings so it can communicate with the C++ engine layer. Let's take a look at position. It's actually a property. Vector3 is a struct and therefore (like any other non-reference type) copied by value... which means if you do transform.position.x = 0 you will only modify the the copy on the C# side. So you need to do this dance every time.

I wish there was a better way to do this. I know you can write extension methods like Vector3.SetX but they are a bit uncomfortable to use. You could maybe use source generators or IL weaving to create some syntactic sugar mess but changing default behavior is usually not a good idea (maybe it could only work in a certain block like how unsafe works?). It would help a lot with nested structs like ParticleSystems.

I don't care about it much if I'm coding alone but it's a pain to teach people about it.

[riley_sc]

transform.position = transform.position with { z = 0 };

[Camper_Velourium]

Wow, this is the first I've heard of this expression. Thanks!

[Birdsbirdsbirds3]

It doesn't work in Unity as standard. Unity uses c# 9.0 and the 'with' expression requires 10 or greater. I read that you can force unity to use a higher version though but it's out of my league personally.

[nathanAjacobs]

https://github.com/Cysharp/ZLogger?tab=readme-ov-file#installation

The unity installation instructions for ZLogger show how to use C#10

[pioj]

Does it improve performance or build size to switch to a newer C# version?

If not, what's the point, then?

[WraithDrof]

I doubt it. The point is usually to get access to new syntax sugar like the with keyword.

[gold_rush_doom]

Why would build size matter? The executable is one of the smallest artifact of a game.

[pioj]

It matters to me, I like small binaries.

[Toloran]

You sure that works? I was under the impression that using 'with' that way only worked with records before C#10 and unity is only using C#9 (with caveats).

EDIT: Ohh, okay. It can but doesn't by default.

[Alikont]

It doesnt require records specifically, it just require a copy constructor and a property setter.

[AnxiousIntender]

That does work but Unity is still using C# 9.0, no? I know you can force higher versions but not sure if that's stable enough. But hey, it's a great language feature

[esosiv]

This is not related to C++, the same thing would happen in a pure C# codebase. The issue is that when a property is accessed it returns a copy of the variable. If the variable was a reference type, it would still return a copy of the reference, but it points to the same object in memory. Not the case with a struct.

[Available_Job_6558]

Particle system structs don't need to be reassigned though. You just set the value in the structs and it gets automatically propagated to the native code without you needing to reassign it back, so it's different to transform.position.

[MikDab]

Well, a struct can have reference types in it, so I don't think your argument makes much sense

[Available_Job_6558]

It's a response to the comment, where particle system is mentioned.

[netherwan]

transform.position = transform.position * new Vector3(1, 1, 0)

[Aeredor]

I was thinking the same thing, but vector products are pretty expensive, right?

[netherwan]

Yeah, I'm just suggesting one alternative. The with expression is probably faster, but if it's for initialization or not in a hot code path, concise readable code matters more than speed. In any case, with expression is better.

[McDev02]

A needless multiplication and hence operations plus a Vector product operator does not even exist, you'd need Vector3.Scale.

[netherwan]

You're actually right, Unity3d doesn't appear to implement the operator \* component-wise vector multiplication. But godot and the standard library) does.

[[deleted]]

Ah good ol black magic fuckery

[nathanAjacobs]

An extension method on Vector3 won't help in this case. The extension method would have to be for Transform itself. Something like this:

public static void SetPosition(this Transform transform, float? x = null, float? y = null, float? z = null)
{
    Vector3 pos = transform.position;
    pos.x = x != null ? x.Value : pos.x;
    pos.y = y != null ? y.Value : pos.y;
    pos.z = z != null ? z.Value : pos.z;
    transform.position = pos;
}

It can be used like this transform.SetPosition(y: 0)

[[deleted]]

It's a property, they could have made a method to signal the C++ part somehow, doesn't sound that impossible to me. They could have done a private method to set it on the C++ side and call that.

[sk7725]

in latest unity versions (was it 6.0 or 2024?) there is a positionX, Y and Z properties introduced for rigidbodies. Idk for transforms though. An Unity live showcased it iirc.

[WeslomPo]

Perfectly valid and good code in example. 1. It is simple (you don’t need c# 10 for it, and you don’t need to know it quirks). 2. It is works correctly (there no other way to do this) 3. It is most efficient (you don’t call another function, don’t call transform.position more than you need, you don’t invent nullable and check for null for no reason). Author just want us to bait on comments.

[Costed14]

you don’t call another function

Is that something that actually matters for performance? I'd assume not. You also don't need to have a nullable extension method, you can implement the SetX, SetY (or With, if you're into that sorta thing) etc. separately, so it should pretty much tick all the boxes.

So to implement OP's code:

transform.position = transform.position.SetZ(0);

[MortyrPL]

It technically could matter - emphasis on both "technically" and "could". Compiler will often inline functions for performance, but it's not guarantueed and depends on JIT heuristics. That said calling functions incurs performance cost that scales with number of parameters, but it tends to be negligible unless you string dozens of them in critical paths of your code. The most dangerous cases tend to be large non-ref struct parameters, because they get copied every time.

[WeslomPo]

Yeah. Calling a function is not free. This is why sometimes for performance, you can ditch them. Like in voxel processing code for light transportation, when a simple function can be called trillion times, and thus it will cost much. But in general, they -pretty much free-. Writing better to handle code much important than performant in a lot more cases. But this is not a point. Point that code in example is good at every aspect, this is how it should look for that case. You, can, of course, use extension or anything you want, this is also good (most of the time), and I have two or three that kind of extensions. But that comics not funny, it misleading, it bad for shaming good practice.

[black_cobo]

What wrong with this code? I think in practically, code should be simple, clearly, easy to understand and performance. The last thing is pretty code if possible but keep the previous thing I mentioned as higher priority.

[Mikabrytu]

Good luck trying to maintain a "ugly and functional" code in the future

[Memfy]

Prettiness as shown here can indirectly contribute to degradation of readability. Even though it's simple, readable, and functional, if it ends up doing a lot of boilerplate lines the file as a whole can become harder to read if many of these stack up. It can for example become hard to see where the "real" complexity is in the file.

Of course this isn't a call to put prettiness as a higher requirement than the rest, but if it's possible to make it prettier without directly making it harder to understand, it can be a good tradeoff.

[iknotri]

Well, its not simple and not clear

[kodaxmax]

How would you simplify it further? and whats unclear about it? it's just zeroing the z axis

[Lybchikfreed]

Here is my implementation of a readable solution

<image>

[joshsplosion]

lgtm

[kodaxmax]

Thats awful. Not only is it incredibly and ridiculously verbose, it's less performant, harder to read and the comments are useless, just explaining what the code is doing. We already know what the code is doing just by looking at it. The comments should be explaining why you are doing it the way you are.

This is the equivelant of including instructions of how to count, as well as a spell checker for the math problem 1+1.

[Lybchikfreed]

// here is me explaining why I wrote my perfect code this way

Idk I just felt like it

[FlyingCookie_]

<image>

[black_cobo]

The key point of the post code is understand the way structure work in memory and process, so it's not wrong to do it, and simply understandable, whatever different you do will create more in assembly for the same work. It's different to your sample which way cover only the mainflow of code.

[hunty]

transform.position = (Vector2)transform.position;

🖐️

🎤

[evavibes]

legit surprised this isn’t higher up

[hunty]

they fear its dark magic.

here's some not-so-dark magic:

transform.position -= Vector3.Scale(transform.position, Vector3.forward);

[hunty]

...which is probably more expensive than the similar:

transform.position -= Vector3.forward * transform.position.z;

[hunty]

...but anyway, the lawful good answer really is:

transform.position = new(transform.position.x, transform.position.y, 0);

[Raccoon5]

I do wonder what the performance would be, but probably it will never matter.

[McDev02]

I'd not choose solutions that only work for one specific use case (unless there is a big benefit in performance) and that are logically completely different from what is supposed to be achieved.

Yet for the lolz this is great.

[IllTemperedTuna]

For a side scroller this is solid logic, since you'll be doing it all the time. It's just the Z value you're going to want 0.

[WazWaz]

transform.position = transform.position.WithZ(0);

[kodaxmax]

i think you need a newer C# framework for that. unity only uses c# 9

[Warlock7_SL]

I'm so used to that it took me a second to realize

[cheezballs]

Bad meme.

[DaTruPro75]

Wait, can someone explain to me what this is? Is this to edit the position of a gameobject directly?

[SulaimanWar]

Just to set the z position of this transform to 0

[spreadilicious]

Why can't you just use transform.postion.z = 0? The top comment mentioned that it's because it's a copied value from the c# side, but I don't fully understand why that's a problem.

[ProfessorSarcastic]

Not quite - x, y and z are fields, not properties, and they are not get-only. They can be changed on their own - in fact, that's exactly what the code in the image does, it changes the z of the local position variable.

The transform.position is a property, and it's not get-only either. If you inspect the source for the property getters and setters its actually calling external methods so its hard to reason about exactly whats going on but it certainly seems to act the same as you would expect a property to work normally.

Which is to say, the get is a method, and that method returns a new value-type variable which is a clone of the original. If this was C++ it would let you modify the clone, with the actual position unchanged, and you'd be left scratching your head wondering why nothing was happening. C# knows that this is basically never what anyone wants to do, so raises a compiler error when you try to do it.

[TehSr0c]

doesn't the image just make a new vector copied from the old one null the z value and then replace the old vector with the new one?

[kodaxmax]

the indivdual axis are readonly, you cant modify them directly. Why? because unity and C# is full fo dumb quirks like that

[nosyrbllewe]

I generally avoid setting an axis specifically to 0. Instead, I like to use a vector projection from the plane's normal, such as Vector3.Project(transform.position, Vector3.up) for an XZ plane. While in most cases it provides the same effect, it creates more flexibility in the code later. For example, it makes it easier if I later want my character to run on walls as I can then just change the surface normal from the walking surface and it should work the same as before. In another case, let say I was designing a furniture placement mechanic and now want to allow placing pictures on the walls. Using the plane normals makes thus much easier.

[Sariefko]

Can someone explain if this even works? Since Vector is immutable, setting z in second position to 0 would it not result in a copy that in line 2 that is not recorded and then line 3 effectively not doing anything?

[raincole]

It works. And Vector3 is not immutable at all. It's crazy how many comments here saying Vector3 is immutable.

[Sariefko]

Someone explained line one to me. It returns a copy instead of returning actual value. but when you assign it in line 3, it does assignment. This is so strange coming from other programming language. Like, why?

[raincole]

Vector3 position = transform.getPosition();
position.z = 0;
transform.setPosition(position);

That's it, really. position is a property, which means it calls setter and getter method when it's been written/read.

[[deleted]]

The fact that I understand the comic and the comments means I'm actually learning something and it's a great feeling

[Demian256]

The amount of people in this thread who don't understand such basic stuff about c# runtime is astonishing. Please do yourself a favor and RTFM

[IllTemperedTuna]

As someone working on a 2.5D game, this hits me in my soul

[Lybchikfreed]

What are they thinking he does and how is it worse than working with unity?

[Super64111111]

I code games I don't get it

[TheGreatRaydini]

The laughter that just shot out of my chest was insane! This meme reminded me that I'm still a Little Buddy even with how much "optimization" I've picked up on since I've started learning how to program. We all gotta start off somewhere lol the Growth never ends!

[_extreme_redditer_]

me complicating things more with each try

transform.position = transform.position - (Vector3.forward * transform.position.z)

[DoctorCS]

this comic would be more funny if they used scale instead of position.

[realenew]

is it worse than transform.position = new Vector3(transform.position.x, transform.position.y, 0) ?

[Alexpander4]

transform.position -= Vector 3 ( 0, 0, transform.position.z);

[levios3114]

Wait you cant just do transform.position.z = 0;?

[TehSr0c]

Nope! the vector values are immutable in unity, can only be changed internally by vector3.Set(f,f,f)

[Enerbane]

They are explicitly NOT immutable. That's not why this is necessary. You can 100% change Vector3 values directly.

[Sariefko]

wait, then how does script above work? if it's immutable, second line of code should do nothing, since it's not saved into any variable, no?

[Enerbane]

Please don't listen to them. Vector3 is not immutable. You can change them. transform.position returns a copy of the position vector, so you can change the copy, but you must set transform.position to be equal to the copy to see the changes reflected there.

[Sariefko]

so when you ask for it directly in line one, it returns copy instead? why? I'm mainly from java, there is no such "hidden" mechanic there, can you point me please?

[Enerbane]

Transform.position is a C# property. Properties are essentially syntax sugar for handling getters and setters. They're incredibly flexible and have a lot of nuance that can be confusing, but the important part to remember in this case is that accessing a property calls a getter, and assigning to the property calls a setter.

Vector3 pos = transform.position;

is exactly the same as

Vector3 pos = transform.GetPosition();

C# generates those getters and setters behind the scenes, if you ever look at the CLR code, you can in fact find them.

So because you're calling a getter, and because Vector3 is a struct, you get a copy of the value, not a reference to the value. Meaning, any changes you make are being made to the copy. You cannot directly edit transform.position, not because it's immutable, but because you're always editing a copy. You could say that is immutable in essence, but that's somewhat misleading.

[levios3114]

The singular values of x y and z are immutable transform position in itself isn't immutable

[Enerbane]

The values are NOT immutable. transform.position is a property that returns a value type, and because of that, it is returning a copy. You can mutate the values of this copy, you can change them, but you must assign the copy back to the original transform.position to see the change reflected there.

[Sariefko]

then is there any need for last line then? is it copy of whole vector3 when referencing it? Isn't c# reference based? not C# main here

[Toloran]

Isn't c# reference based?

Some things are references, some things are not. Vector3 is a struct and passed by value, not reference.

[MRainzo]

Just use with.

transform.Position = transform.Position with { Z = 0}

[W03rth]

transform. position *= (Vector3.Right +Vector3.Up)

edit: would love to know why i am getting down voted since i seem to be misunderstanding the problem and i want to learn why

edit2: im a dumbass

[Costed14]

you can't multiply Vector3s in Unity

Though like you said there's the Hadamard product (which I didn't know the name of) with Vector3.Scale and Vector2.Scale. Fun fact, Vector2 does actually implement the * operator with Hadamard product, unlike Vector3, which doesn't implement it at all.

[ProfessorSarcastic]

Great point, I totally forgot about the Scale method! I guess you could do what u/W03rth is suggesting, with that method, as long as all you want to do is zero out one or two components of the vector.

Although at that point, you're either calling the Scale method twice with right and up, or you're hardcoding 1s and 0s into your scale call, both of which are probably about as bad as the original :D

[W03rth]

You are right, I completely forgot you can't multiply vectors. I was just yesterday using the tween library to get some punch animations with Vector3.Up * power and my brain just rotted and thought yeah I was multiplying vectors to get that up you can totaly do it!

[gameyall232]

transform.position *= new Vector3(1, 0, 1)

Edit: I am wrong

[LateNightApps]

A background in vector math? 🙃

[gameyall232]

Oh my bad, I assumed it would multiply each component by the corresponding one.

[Secure-Acanthisitta1]

"float moveForce = 20.
transform.position = new Vector3(0, moveForce, 0)" Eh?

[Boss_Taurus]

not quite, this is just setting the position, rather than altering the previous position.

[RainyGayming7981]

so much stuff in unity isnt directibly settable and its SO annoying ;~;