How to disable component unity

Enabling or Disabling Components – Unity3D Bolt Micro-Tutorial

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This entry is part of a series of tips I am creating as I make my game.

Details

What we need: A GameObject with a component we want to disable (in this case, an Animator component)

Input: A GameObject.

Output: The GameObject, but now the component is disabled.

How this saves you time: It’s not terribly obvious in Bolts documentation how to disable a component, a common task.

Summary: This tutorial shows you how to disable a component on a GameObject in Bolt.

Output

How to Implement

Here is an example of the completed Flow Graph:

In Bolt, each component gets its own Set Enabled component that takes the output of a Get Component. For example, if you wanted to disable the Box Collider of a GameObject then you would use the following instead of Animator Set Enabled:

Just make sure you update the Get Component to obtain a Box Collider as well.

If you need to deactivate a component that is on a different GameObject, change the Self to reference the GameObject in question:

Unity Remove Components Attached to GameObjects

Tips and Tricks: Remove Components Attached to GameObjects in Unity

Introduction

Using the power of components to drive game design is what makes developing with Unity so flexible and easy to use. Building around singular behaviors and reusing them across your game makes for better code that is easy to understand. There are tons of literature on how to add components at runtime to modify the behaviors of your GameObjects. What is a little harder to find is, how to remove behaviors. How does Unity remove components during runtime? What does it take and what is the best way to achieve deleting behaviors without sacrificing performance?

In this Tips and Tricks: Unity Remove Components we are going to show you how to properly remove, destroy, and disable components. As well as review the best practices for writing performant code that does what you expect.

Remove Component With the Destroy Method

The first way you can remove components is by destroying them. This will permanently remove the component and all associated settings from the GameObject.

The destroy method can be called directly on a component that has been retrieved with GetComponent. The example here uses the generic method. This uses the diamond notation to specify that the type we are looking for is ParticleSystem.

Destroy Component By Name

You can also use the component’s name to destroy it. This once again uses GetComponent to retrieve the component. While this method is a possibility, it is not type safe and can lead to some irregularities under certain circumstances.

However, it is useful in scenarios where you only have access to a list of types in string format. For example, if you had a game that randomly removed abilities from the player. You could store the component types in a string list and get the component name by random index. This situation would require the string method.

Destroy Component by Type in Unity

Next, Unity can remove components by specifying the type of the component. Typeof is a type safe way of getting a component. You can trust it will always return the component you specified.

Remove Component Stored in Variable

Additionally, destroy will work on components you have cached in variables. All you have to do is use the helper method GetType() to specify the component to remove.

Destroy Component Vs Disable Component

Now, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to remove a component from a GameObject but only temporarily. Adding a new component means you have to reconfigure any parameters that may have been set up originally. This is a lot of wasted work for destroying a component.

Disable components instead. When a component is disabled it stops functioning and retains all of its values when disabled. Also, the lifecycle method OnDisable will be called when the component is disabled meaning you can trigger other logic to happen as your behavior is removed. OnEnable will also be triggered if you decide to enable the component later. This will give the ability to update any connections or settings before the normal game logic is applied.

Furthermore, when you disable components instead of destroying them, you do not create overhead and garbage that will bog down your game. It is the same reason your game will perform better using object pooling over instantiating and destroying GameObjects over and over.

How to Disable Components

Unity does not provide a method for disabling and enabling components. Instead, they provide access to active status through the use of a property. Properties essentially act as both a getter and setter method. We can change the status like so.

We can easily set up a switch method to cycle back and forth between enabled and disabled by setting it to the opposite of itself. Neat.

Unity Remove Component Example

We have created a simple scene to demonstrate how these methods work. The scene has one GameObject with a sprite renderer and particle system attached. The input system has been configured to trigger each of the methods above.

Trigger the DisableComponentSwitch button and watch the SpriteRenderer turn off. Notice the component is still attached to our GameObject. Hit it again and the sprite will reappear.

Now, enter the input for one of the destroy methods. The particles disappear and the component is no longer attached.

And now you are ready to remove, destroy, and disable components in the games you create with Unity. Thank you for stopping by. Stick around and check out more of our tutorials or posts like our piece on Unity’s GetComponent method for Accessing, Storing, and Modifying Components. Also, leave a comment telling us what you liked or did not like about the tutorial. Was it easy to follow along? What do you want to learn next? As always, check out some of our published apps below.

Unity Remove Components Attached to GameObjects

Tips and Tricks: Remove Components Attached to GameObjects in Unity

Introduction

Using the power of components to drive game design is what makes developing with Unity so flexible and easy to use. Building around singular behaviors and reusing them across your game makes for better code that is easy to understand. There are tons of literature on how to add components at runtime to modify the behaviors of your GameObjects. What is a little harder to find is, how to remove behaviors. How does Unity remove components during runtime? What does it take and what is the best way to achieve deleting behaviors without sacrificing performance?

In this Tips and Tricks: Unity Remove Components we are going to show you how to properly remove, destroy, and disable components. As well as review the best practices for writing performant code that does what you expect.

Remove Component With the Destroy Method

The first way you can remove components is by destroying them. This will permanently remove the component and all associated settings from the GameObject.

The destroy method can be called directly on a component that has been retrieved with GetComponent. The example here uses the generic method. This uses the diamond notation to specify that the type we are looking for is ParticleSystem.

Destroy Component By Name

You can also use the component’s name to destroy it. This once again uses GetComponent to retrieve the component. While this method is a possibility, it is not type safe and can lead to some irregularities under certain circumstances.

However, it is useful in scenarios where you only have access to a list of types in string format. For example, if you had a game that randomly removed abilities from the player. You could store the component types in a string list and get the component name by random index. This situation would require the string method.

Destroy Component by Type in Unity

Next, Unity can remove components by specifying the type of the component. Typeof is a type safe way of getting a component. You can trust it will always return the component you specified.

Remove Component Stored in Variable

Additionally, destroy will work on components you have cached in variables. All you have to do is use the helper method GetType() to specify the component to remove.

Destroy Component Vs Disable Component

Now, you may find yourself in a situation where you need to remove a component from a GameObject but only temporarily. Adding a new component means you have to reconfigure any parameters that may have been set up originally. This is a lot of wasted work for destroying a component.

Disable components instead. When a component is disabled it stops functioning and retains all of its values when disabled. Also, the lifecycle method OnDisable will be called when the component is disabled meaning you can trigger other logic to happen as your behavior is removed. OnEnable will also be triggered if you decide to enable the component later. This will give the ability to update any connections or settings before the normal game logic is applied.

Furthermore, when you disable components instead of destroying them, you do not create overhead and garbage that will bog down your game. It is the same reason your game will perform better using object pooling over instantiating and destroying GameObjects over and over.

How to Disable Components

Unity does not provide a method for disabling and enabling components. Instead, they provide access to active status through the use of a property. Properties essentially act as both a getter and setter method. We can change the status like so.

We can easily set up a switch method to cycle back and forth between enabled and disabled by setting it to the opposite of itself. Neat.

Unity Remove Component Example

We have created a simple scene to demonstrate how these methods work. The scene has one GameObject with a sprite renderer and particle system attached. The input system has been configured to trigger each of the methods above.

Trigger the DisableComponentSwitch button and watch the SpriteRenderer turn off. Notice the component is still attached to our GameObject. Hit it again and the sprite will reappear.

Now, enter the input for one of the destroy methods. The particles disappear and the component is no longer attached.

And now you are ready to remove, destroy, and disable components in the games you create with Unity. Thank you for stopping by. Stick around and check out more of our tutorials or posts like our piece on Unity’s GetComponent method for Accessing, Storing, and Modifying Components. Also, leave a comment telling us what you liked or did not like about the tutorial. Was it easy to follow along? What do you want to learn next? As always, check out some of our published apps below.

Unity enable/disable component script from component on same gameObject

Preamble

I am currently making a game where a player can go from third person view, walking around to transition into a vehicle.

I have thought about using a transmitter/receiver type set up, but I think my way of simplifying it isn’t correct.

I am using assets from third parties for controllers that use inputs. My plan was to enable/disable the appropriate script and camera from the object I want to control. I’ve gotten as far as being able to disable the previous controller and enable the next, though I can’t go back to enabling since the script obviously doesn’t run anymore.

Question/Request

I’d like to be able to reference the pawn’s input component script in a different component script on the same gameobject to then be able to enable/disable the aformentioned component, though the issue is that the input controllers have variable names (Different names depending on the third party on each pawn).

Here’s how I have it set up: I have a PlayerTransmitter that handles the basics of turning things on and off. I tried making this where all of the inputs are being handled, but I don’t want to have to change the original controller scripts to look at this script. This is on an empty game object and handles the ‘state’ of the player, (walking or in which vehicle).

Right now, the walking pawn has a component called AdvancedWalkerController (You may know the one I’m talking about) that controls the player walking movement and the vehicle has a component called VehicleController which controls how the vehicle moves and handles.

The two images above show that I am using the same InputReceiver component on both pawns. My plan was to pass in each pawn’s input controller (temporarily named CleanerController ) and then enable/disable that input controller depending on the PlayerTransmitter ‘state’.

The InputReceiver currently looks like this:

I was hoping I could just use the reference to the component CleanerController to say CleanerController.enabled = true; or false with that reference being just that one component, though I’m missing something here.

My final thought which I am going to try is to allow/disallow the input controls within each input script depending on my isEnabled boolean. Though again, I would have to change the original scripts to accommodate this.

GameObject.SetActive

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Parameters

Description

Activates/Deactivates the GameObject, depending on the given true or false value.

A GameObject may be inactive because a parent is not active. In that case, calling SetActive will not activate it, but only set the local state of the GameObject, which you can check using GameObject.activeSelf. Unity can then use this state when all parents become active.

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