Tag: unity

Let’s say I have a script that calls a method frequently, and when doing so wants to allow other objects to know about it and potentially alter what happens in that method. This is fairly simple to do using C# events:

public class PassByReference 
{
    public bool foo;

    public PassByReference(bool foo)
    {
        this.foo = foo;
    }
}

public class Example : MonoBehaviour
{
    public event Action<PassByReference> OnSomethingHappened;

    private void DoSomething()
    {
        var returnOut = false;

        // Do some stuff

        var passByReference = new PassByReference(returnOut);
        OnSomethingHappened?.Invoke(passByReference); // Some other object can read and alter this

        if (passByReference.foo)
            return;

       // Do some more stuff
    }
}

Is this a good way to do things if one anticipates that, based on a combination of the information given by the event, and their own properties, other objects may want to stop the second half of the Example method from running (or maybe alter what happens)? I guess what I’m trying to do is prevent the Example class from having to store references to many other classes that will interact with it only occasionally, and clog up the method with many if statements. My main concern, though, is that frequently creating new classes to pass data via reference in the event(s) can lead to performance issues, especially if many objects in my game are using the Example script.