Populating the Game Environment - Unity for Absolute Beginners - page 310

Figure 7-22. The contents of the New Area array on Occluder

A more abbreviated way to iterate through an array is the foreach loop. Because foreach loops do
not require a length to know when to stop, they have the advantage of being able to iterate through
lists. Lists are a close relative of arrays. Unlike arrays, you cannot get their length, but their length
can be dynamically changed during run time. Let's get the contents of the newArea array with the
foreach loop.

Below the closing curly bracket for the for loop, add the following:

6.

print (""); // do a carriage return

foreach(GameObject theElement in newArea) {
print (theElement.name); // print the name of the current element
}
7. Save the script, and click Play.
The results are the same. The foreach loop goes through the array, assigning each to a temporary
variable of type GameObject, prints its name, and continues going through the array until it has
come to the end of the array. The foreach is perfect for doing something to each element in an array.
Let's use the foreach loop to change the active state on the array elements.

Delete or comment out the contents of the Start function.

8.

Add the following to the OnTriggerEnter function, inside the if clause:

9.

foreach(GameObject theElement in newArea) {
theElement.SetActive(state); // set the object's active parameter to state
}
The SetActive function or method will set the object and all of its children on or off according to
whether you use true or false as its argument.

10. Save the script.

You will require four occluder triggers for each gate, so this will be a good candidate for a prefab.

1. In the Prefabs folder, create a new folder and name it Misc .

2. Drop the Occluder object into the new folder.