Issues with Ball script not accessing components

[ArtOfTheNiles]

So I’m having trouble with my Ball.cs script responding to commands once I’ve made the DragLaunch.cs script to access it. The methods all worked before, and theoretically work now, but for some reason now I get a bunch of Null Reference Exceptions. After adding a bunch of extra redundancy to my code to eliminate the NREs I still get an error “Can not play a disabled audio source” which is clearly not null, or disabled. Regardless, it still prevents Ball.cs from doing it’s job, the ball never launches. See screenshot and code below. Anybody have any idea what’s going on here?

Drag Launch:

Summary

using UnityEngine;

[RequireComponent(typeof(Ball))]

public class DragLaunch : MonoBehaviour {

    private Ball ball;

    private Vector3 dragStart, dragEnd;
    private float startTime, endTime;

    private void Awake()
    {
        ball = gameObject.GetComponent<Ball>();
    }

    public void DragStart()
    {
        dragStart = Input.mousePosition;
        startTime = Time.time;
    }

    public void DragEnd()
    {
        dragEnd = Input.mousePosition;
        endTime = Time.time;

        float dragTime = endTime - startTime;
        float dragSpeedX = (dragStart.x - dragEnd.x) / dragTime;
        float dragSpeedZ = (dragStart.y - dragEnd.y) / dragTime;

        if(ball != null)
        {
            ball.Launch(new Vector3(dragSpeedX, 0, dragSpeedZ));
        }
        else 
        {
            ball = gameObject.GetComponent<Ball>();
            ball.Launch(new Vector3(dragSpeedX, 0, dragSpeedZ));
        }
    }
}

Ball:

Summary

using UnityEngine;

[RequireComponent(typeof(Rigidbody))]
[RequireComponent(typeof(AudioSource))]

public class Ball : MonoBehaviour {

    private Rigidbody rigidBody;
    private AudioSource audioSource;

	void Start () {
        rigidBody = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
        audioSource = GetComponent<AudioSource>();

        rigidBody.useGravity = false;
    }

    public void Launch(Vector3 velocity)
    {
        if(rigidBody != null)
        {
            rigidBody.useGravity = true;
            rigidBody.velocity = velocity;
        }
        else 
        {
            rigidBody = GetComponent<Rigidbody>();
            rigidBody.useGravity = true;
            rigidBody.velocity = velocity;
        }

        if(audioSource != null)
        {
            audioSource.enabled = true;
            audioSource.Play();
        }
        else 
        {
            audioSource = GetComponent<AudioSource>();
            audioSource.enabled = true;
            audioSource.Play();
        }
    }
}

[ArtOfTheNiles]

Remember, the number one reason for computer problems is user error! I’m going to leave my solution here just in case anyone else runs into it.

So the problem I was running into was that I had the UI touch input panel referring to the prefab of the ball, and not the instance of the ball in the scene. That is what was causing all the Null Reference Exceptions. The redundancy checks were all well and good, but it was never referencing an object, so the errors just piled up nonsense. Compiler was happy, but the Unity Editor was not, so be careful about referencing prefabs!