Original subtitles

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[MUSIC] 2

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I'm sure you've heard the famous saying, tidy hierarchy, tidy mind. 3

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Well, if we look at our hierarchy when we start to place down defenders, 4

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it becomes very untidy, very messy. 5

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You can see all these gnomes and axes, all sorts of stuff going on, 6

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which makes it difficult if we need to go and figure something out mid-game, 7

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pause it and find what's going on. 8

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Just much better to have it tidy, 9

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particularly when you start making massive projects, which I know you will. 10

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So I'm going to jump over into my defender spawner script. 11

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And up at the very top, gonna create a game object, gameObject, 12

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that will be called defenderParent. 13

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Now I need to put back in my start method. 14

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So start. 15

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What do I wanna have happen on start? 16

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Well, I wanna call a method that 17

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will take care of creating the defender child parent relationship. 18

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So I'll call this CreateDefenderParent. 19

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And parentheses, semicolon. 20

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Right-click, quick actions and refactors, to create that as a method just below it. 21

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And what will be in here? 22

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Well, first step, I'm going to define my defenderParent object as GameObject.find. 23

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So I want to find something. 24

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What am I finding? 25

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Well, I'm finding defenders. 26

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Now, string references we don't like. 27

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They're messy, they're dangerous. 28

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Did I even spell it correctly? 29

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I did on this occasion, yay for me. 30

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What's a better way to do this? 31

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Well, we've just been learning about constant. 32

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So at the top of our script let's add ourselves a const, which will be a string. 33

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And we'll use capitals to show that it's a const, 34

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DEFENDER_PARENT_NAME, and that will equal what? 35

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It will equal Defenders. 36

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So then we've added our string reference just once, and 37

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then in the future we will have this nice little hook that we can access when we're 38

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typing in our autocomplete. 39

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So down here, what are we looking for? 40

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Find, in parenthesis, I'm finding Defender, 41

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and you can see it's got DEFENDER_PARENT_NAME. 42

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So it's exactly the same, I could put my string reference down in there, or 43

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I could just do it once and define it. 44

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Now what if Defender, so this Defenders game object, what if it doesn't exist? 45

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What if there's no such thing in here or what if it's called something different? 46

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Then we don't wanna be having all sorts of errors and exceptions. 47

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So let's say, so if (!defenderParent), so 48

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if the defenderParent doesn't exist, if there is none, then what do we wanna do? 49

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We want to have defenderParent be defined as, so defenderParent equals new, 50

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creating a new, GameObject, and then DEFENDER_PARENT_NAME. 51

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See how nice that was to have auto completed? 52

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Okay, let's save that up, and, down the bottom, 53

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we actually need to use this one we instantiated. 54

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So down the very bottom, I've got SpawnDefender. 55

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And we're creating a new defender, so 56

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I will write newDefender.transform.parent is going to be equal to what? 57

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It's going to be equal to 58

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defenderParent.transform;. 59

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So that means that it's instantiated as a child to our defenderParent. 60

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Save that up, make sure it works, click on Play. 61

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When I drop down my gnomes, get down some gnomes, [SOUND] You can see that 62

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they are created within our, now pause, cuz we've still got out projectiles there. 63

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In our Defenders, you can see all of my gnomes, and 64

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within our defender gameObjects which is awesome. 65

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Okay, and because we do have all those messy projectiles, 66

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we need to take care of those and that's going to be the challenge for you. 67

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So do the same with projectiles, 68

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have our projectiles parented to a projectile game object. 69

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Take that on, and I'll see you back on when you're done. 70

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Okay, where do we find this? 71

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What's the script we're looking in? 72

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Well, I'm going to jump in here. 73

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It's gonna be one of two, it's either gonna be Projectile or Shooter. 74

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I'm gonna have a little bit of quick glance at it, which of these, okay, 75

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I'm instantiating on fire, so I know that it's shooter. 76

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Open that up, same process, up at the top I'm gonna create 77

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myself a game object which I will call projectileParent. 78

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Within start we're gonna call the method weren't created yet 79

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which will be CreateProjectileParent. 80

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Right-click, Quick actions and Refactors, generate that method just down below here. 81

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What do we need to do? 82

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Well, projectileParent is going to be equal GameObject.Find. 83

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What are we finding? 84

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Well, we haven't created our const just yet. 85

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So, let's do that at the top. 86

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Const string, and this will be PROJECTILE PARENT, 87

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oops, _NAME. 88

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That's gonna be equal to or assigned as Projectiles. 89

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Semicolon, okay, so now what are we finding? 90

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We're finding PROJECTILE_PARENT_NAME, excellent. 91

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Same as before, if there is none, so if parentheses 92

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exclamation mark, there's no projectile parent, then what do we wanna do? 93

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Well, we better go ahead and create one. 94

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ProjectileParent = new GameObject, 95

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in parentheses PROJECT_PARENT_NAME. 96

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And you know what? 97

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I didn't do this deliberately, but I've gone and 98

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made a mistake that I'll show you how awesome this is. 99

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I've named it PROJECT_PARENT_NAME, that makes absolutely no sense, 100

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what was I thinking? 101

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So double-click on that. 102

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Control RR, I can see there's three instances and I can go in here and 103

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say PROJECTILE_PARENT_NAME. 104

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Apply, there we go, and we've easily renamed that. 105

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Thank you for having that as a const worked out nicely. 106

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And the of course we scroll all the way down to the bottom and 107

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we find where we are instantiating and we need to add an extra bit in here. 108

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Well, first of all, we're only instantiating this as an object. 109

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We need to instantiate as a game object. 110

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So what I mean by that, in front of instantiate we type GameObject, 111

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and then we give it a new name. 112

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So newProjectile = it's going to be a big line, but we'll put it on multiple lines, 113

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=, gonna give this a new line, Instantiate(projectile, 114

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and the position and the rotation, and as GameObject. 115

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Why do we do that? 116

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Well, that's we're casting it, that's what this is called, 117

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and we say as game object we need this as a game object so 118

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that we can place it within our hierarchy and we can manipulate it. 119

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When we instantiate not as a GameObject, it's instantiated just as an object. 120

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And you can see here, UnityEngine.Object.Instantiate, and 121

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we don't have as much control over it. 122

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A GameObject allows us to do things that if it's just an object, we can't do. 123

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Okay, it's a very simple explanation but basically, 124

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we're casting it as a GameObject, so that we can now do more stuff with it, 125

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which is going to say newProjectile. 126

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NewProjectile, if I can spell it correctly .transform.parent 127

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is going to be = projectileParent.transform. 128

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Save that, let's see how we go. 129

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Back over into Unity, click on Play. 130

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Drop down some cacti to make sure it's not just the gnomes that it works with. 131

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[SOUND] Okay, they're shooting a bunch of stuff. 132

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We're gonna have explosions that come and 133

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go cuz they're being destroyed when they have done their business. 134

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And if we look, there's a Projectiles game object and 135

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we've got some projectiles that are within that. 136

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Excellent so that's mission accomplished. 137

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Tidied up the hierarchy. 138

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It might seem like a small minor thing but 139

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it's really important to get into these habits. 140

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So that you can impress your colleagues when you're out there working in 141

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the game industry with, look how neat and tidy my hierarchy is. 142

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That's one reason of many. 143

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So great work, and I'll see you in the next lecture.