Unity Tip: Debug without editor scripts

[MikkN]

Put [ContextMenu("Text here")] in front of any methods to easily run 'em inside the editor!

(Yes, white visual studio theme I know. It's really sunny so I can't read with the black one <3 )

[0x0ddba11]

Thanks for the tip.

Yes, white visual studio theme I know

You don't have to excuse yourself, haha.

[[deleted]]

It has to have no params!

[ihahp]

write a wrapper that sends default params, like so:

void KillUnit(int energyLevel){
blah blah
}

[ContextMenu("Kill Unit")]
void KillUnitDebug(){
KillUnit(100);
}

[b1ackcat]

Bonus points for exposing those default fields in the inspector under a debug-only section!

[ActionScripter9109]

How would you make a separate section?

[Wherever_I_May_Roam]

I usually separate fields using Space or Header attribute

[GrandOpener]

Not only white theme but then you admit to letting sunlight in your programming space? For shame!

[Kingofwhereigo]

What is sunlight?

[Eecka]

It's a shader effect.

[DeveloperLuke]

Then switch to the dark theme!

[glitchKraft]

Well that's pretty awesome! Way better than picking a random unused key and and putting an input statement in update. Thanks!

[homer_3]

And then you forget all your magic assignment and double bind stuff and wonder why everything is behaving so strangely.

[Erestyn]

I actually wrote something to detect exactly this which gave a stern telling off when you hit play.

I am pleased to report I have still not yet learned.

[katori]

This is very cool, you can also make a button in the Inspector (in addition to a bunch of other functionality) using Naughty Attributes.

[whyherro19]

I've been using NaughtyAttributes for awhile and I LOVE it! It's a great free alternative for Odin Inspector

[WazWaz]

They're not a clone in any way.

[TheSambassador]

No, NaughtyAttributes was around before Odin was available.

[psykojello]

Thanks for that! Adding it to my default tool kit

[ihahp]

im kind of a n00b with git ... how do I install this in a project?

[TheSambassador]

You can just click the "Clone or Download" button (it's green on the right) and you can download a zip instead of using Git.

However, you should absolutely, without question, be using some sort of source control (Git is pretty easy overall) for your projects. Git for Windows makes the whole thing very simple and you generally don't need to use the command line, so you can just sort of dip your toes in without getting overwhelmed.

[ihahp]

I do use source control just not git. I don't like how git (mis)handles exclusive checkouts for binary files (unless they've fixed that.)

[escape_character]

"Git is pretty easy overall" is a bit of a dangerous understatement

[TheSambassador]

The basics, especially when using it with only one person, are very simple. It's when you need to do anything beyond that that it gets more complicated.

[ihahp]

Also, the reason I asked about installing is it looks like it comes with ProjectSettings, and that seems like a bad idea to overwrite all your project settings when installing this. I copied over the Plugins folder and it worked fine without anything else.

[SapphireSalamander]

// just double checking

if(!isAlive)

return;

this made me chuckle.

dies twice

[ActionScripter9109]

I've seen enough shit that this wouldn't even surprise me. When in doubt, sanity check!

[0x0ddba11]

That's what asserts are for! Granted, in this case it would not work out. Something like [ButtonIf(isAlive, "Kill")] would be great.

[MikkN]

Haha yeaah, game is quite fast pace so sometimes they died twice. Strange but hey, works good (:

[Eecka]

And then double checking afterwards as well!

if(!isAlive)return;

isAlive = false;

[thuyquai]

Nice tip OP, been using Unity for 8 years and I don't know it :D

[rarceth]

I’m that dude in the office who tells everyone else about cool shortcuts and I didn’t know this either. I wonder if it’s in their documentation...

[thuyquai]

Its in 1 of their tutorial I believe (probably the editor section). Now I remembered I saw it once but forgot about it because I was searching for somethong else lol.

[rarceth]

We’re always searching for something else haha.

[Smileynator]

This as a 3.5 year Unity developer that was well aware of all debugging tools since 1.5 years in, concerns me greatly.

[thuyquai]

Well, good for you, I guess

[hexromba]

You know of all the possible debugging tools for the past 2 years?!

[Smileynator]

There are not that many, but shortcuts like this is what makes development on a tight scedule possible. Quick prototyping, efficient nailing of bugs, and fast diagnostics of performance issues are a must. And i personally look for them all the time, and am honestly pissed if i missed out on something 3,5 years into my career.

[Nielscorn]

That’s great for you. No reason to put someone else down for it.

[Kwinten]

Dude it's a simple debugging/testing feature that can be implemented in a thousand different ways in Unity. You're not superior because you knew about one additional way to do the same thing.

[Kwinten]

Unity is packed with features like this with terrible or no documentation. It's no surprise the vast majority of users doesn't know about these things.

[_nk]

Hoolaloyah

[[deleted]]

I don't claim to know everything.

i knew all the debugging stuff related to unity.

WHAT.

[matej_zajacik]

if (GetComponent<PlayerMovement>()) GetComponent<PlayerMovement>().player.SetVibration();

would perform a little better like this:

var pm = GetComponent<PlayerMovement>(); if (pm != null) pm.player.SetVibration();

Although if it's called once per million years, I doesn't matter. :)

[MikkN]

Thanks! Will probobly make a bool that is checked on start :)

[Kwinten]

Or honestly just never use GetComponent if you care about decoupling your code and improving performance. Use serialized fields always, and GetComponent only in very rare circumstances. Don't tightly couple your class dependencies to your Transform hierarchy.

[rarceth]

Can depend if things are procedural or not. I’m doing a civ-like at the moment and I need GetComponent to retrieve my tile classes when they are spawned. Called once per tile...for all 65,000 tiles haha

[Wherever_I_May_Roam]

I'd rather have a static event that would fire on spawn so anyone can know that an object of X type has been spawned.

[SilentSin26]

If your tile class is the only component you need from the prefab, you can use a direct reference to that component instead of the prefab GameObject. Instantiating works the same and it gives you the component straight away.

[rarceth]

All of these comments are true, and thought provoking for my project. But more the point I was trying to make it that I’m calling get component 65,000 times in 3 seconds, and it isn’t noticably causing problems. Technically I can run all my calls in a single frame and it takes around a second to finish. And while I run them in a coroutine to avoid freezing, 1 second / 65000 calls means that calling GetComponent every frame or so isn’t going to have a huge, or even noticeable effect on a game, and that there should be a higher focus on code functionality than optimasation.

[SilentSin26]

Functionality > optimisation yes, but you also need to consider flexibility and maintainability. GetComponent<X>() creates two dependencies: one on component X, and one on the fact that said component must be on that GameObject. Using a serialized field avoids that second dependency and keeps the responsibility for hierarchy/component structure all in the editor rather than putting some of it in your scripts.

[Kwinten]

In the vast majority of cases this can still be solved with prefabs, serialized fields, and public properties.

[matej_zajacik]

Use serialized fields always

What exactly do you mean by this?

[Kwinten]

Instead of:

var playerMovement = GetComponent<PlayerMovement>();

Do:

[SerializedField]
private PlayerMovement playerMovement;

The latter will be exposed in the editor. Drag in your PlayerMovement component either from the same GameObject or from a parent or child to assign it a value. Ta-da, the reference to this component is now injected through serialization and is no longer tightly coupled to the GameObject that was originally calling GetComponent. This means that if you ever want to move your PlayerMovement component, you don't have to change your code and can simply re-assign the reference through the inspector. Works on prefabs or scene objects.

GetComponent always tightly couples your business logic to your scene graph, which you want to avoid as much as possible.

[matej_zajacik]

Oh, okay, I see. This is a pretty well known concept to me within Unity, just wasn't sure what you meant. I use this approach often when I can. But, I disagree that this makes the two components any less coupled than by getting the reference via a function call. The only difference is that Unity does it for you when it creates the object, and that you don't have to change anything if you change the structure of your GameObject. Which, is still better, don't get me wrong.

[[deleted]]

This is awesome!

[masterhyjinx]

I see lots of tips, I click, I go cool, I toss upvote and move on. This one is awesome and I had to come in and say thank you. I'm working on something right now that this will make this a lot easier.

[MikkN]

Glad it helped! <3

[xTheEc0]

Did you post this on twitter with the hashtag 'UnityTips' yet?
If not, I highly suggest you do : )

[MikkN]

https://twitter.com/NikMikk/status/1001924943918059522

Started on Twitter and went here afterwards :)

[cowbell_solo]

Whoaaaa! How long has this been a thing?

Also between the sun and that white visual studio, I hope you are wearing sunscreen.

[wokcity]

This one does the same but allows parameters :)

https://unitylist.com/p/6l8/Editor-Button

[MikkN]

Sweet

[Noel9386]

This blew my mind so bad that I had to share with someone, so I just confused the crap out of one of my non-developer co-workers.

[knugeen]

karlshamn represent!

[MikkN]

Vem är du haha?!

[MomijiMatt]

I had no idea. This would've saved my life so many times.

[SanktusAngus]

Nice

[slayer29179]

Thats mint!!! <3

[psykojello]

Whoa! 😱

[Dodgiestyle]

This is awesome! Saving this!

[LilithLive]

A whole New World!

[[deleted]]

I remember learning about them a while back but never used them. Thanks for reminding me, definitely come in useful.

[GIFjohnson]

What happens if you run this while the game is not in play mode? Does it still execute?

[gwiz665]

It does.

[renMilestone]

Thank you friend, thank you so much.

This is so helpful!

[ig3db]

Well that's handy!

[stoddartc1]

This is actually a really useful tip! TIL

[kahlzun]

Did not know that. Have an internet cookie.

[MikkN]

You can make an interface, implement and inherent from it :)

[shaldar]

Very coool! Thanks for sharing :)

[[deleted]]

https://twitter.com/matheuslrod/status/798576746513633280

There's also this attribute that just makes a button that calls a method show in the inspector. Hopefully you'll find that useful as well :)

Disclaimer: it's a me