Best practice for referencing a GameObject from a prefab with multiple instances

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#1

I’ve been trying to tidy up my code in a game I’m working on and I’m having difficulty figuring out the best way to do this cleanly. I have instantiated prefabs with scripts that need references to a Transform in the scene.

I’m trying to avoid using a singleton, but I’m not sure how else to get a reference to this particular GameObject in the scene, from the script that runs on the prefab when it is instantiated. I could do something like finding the GameObject by name, but that seems quite inefficient when it would be doing that every time a new instance is created, and that would be fairly frequently.

What’s the best practice for a script that lives on a prefab getting a reference to a GameObject in the scene?

Cheers

#2

It depends on the scenario, I suppose. If the prefabs are in the hierarchy at design time, you could use [SerializeField] and assign it in the inspector. If they are being spawned, you could put the [SerializeField] on the ‘spawner’ and pass it to the script through a Setup method. Objects being spawned frequently may benefit from some sort of object pool. That object pool could assign the transform to objects as needed.

#3

Ah yes, having the reference on the spawner and passing the reference to the prefab when it’s instantiated is a great idea. Thanks!

#4

There are a couple of other approaches… You mentioned that these would be on instantiated prefabs, meaning linking an in-scene transform would not work (unless it was part of the prefab to begin with).

Here’s a few tricks:

Let The Spawner Handle It

The script that spawns the object would need a reference to the Transform (and more likely that could be handled in the inspector). Then the script on the Prefab that needs the Transform would have a method like Setup()

public void Setup(Transform importantTransform);
{
    transformINeededToGet = importantTransform);
}

Then the Spawner would do something like this:

GameObject go = Instantiate(prefab, location, rotation);
var component = go.GetComponent<MyScriptThatNeedsTheTransform>();
component.Setup(importantTransform);

Tag, You're it!

Another more blunt method is to simply have the important Transform have a tag like “Player” (you can create any tag you want in the inspector).

void Awake()
{
    transformINeededToGet = GameObject.FindWithTag("ImportantTransform").transform;
}

You're just my Type

An even more blunt method would be to search for the component in question…

void Awake()
{
    transformINeededToGet = FindObjectOfType<MyImportantComponent>().transform;
}
#5

Brilliant! Thank you so much!

#6
#7

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