How to check if a game object is active when outside of its script?-CodePudding

I have a function in the Patient script which adds the patients to the DoctorsPatients list, effectively "assigning" that patient to the doctor. This works fine, but now I want to remove the patients from this list if they are inactive. I am trying to use the Update() function in Doctor to periodically check the list for inactive patients and remove them.

Doctor script:

 public class Doctor : Monobehaviour
{

 public List<Patient> DoctorsPatients = new List<Patient>();

 void Update()
    {
        foreach(Patient pat in DoctorsPatients)
        {
            if (pat.activeSelf == false)
            {
                DoctorsPatients.Remove(pat);
            }
        }
    }
}

I also tried adding in

Patient patient;

in the variables section and changed the loop to this:

        foreach(Patient pat in DoctorsPatients)
        {
            patient = pat.GetComponent<Patient>(); //Target the script?? sometimes works
            if (patient.activeSelf == false)
            {
                DoctorsPatients.Remove(patient);
            }
        }

and I get the same error: " error CS1061: 'Patient' does not contain a definition for 'activeSelf' and no accessible extension method 'activeSelf' accepting a first argument of type 'Patient' could be found (are you missing a using directive or an assembly reference?)"

It seems like I get an error like this every time I want to access game objects from other game objects but this time I cannot solve it with google alone. Thanks.

CodePudding user response：

Two things:

activeSelf is implemented in GameObject so since your Patient class seems to be a MonoBehaviour you can get it via its property gameObject so it would simply be
```
if(!pat.gameObject.activeSelf)
```
BUT while iterating a collection using foreach you may not alter this collection by removing elements from it!

You could however combine both things using List<T>.RemoveAll which in one call goes through the entire list and removes all elements fulfilling a certain condition
```
DoctorsPatients.RemoveAll(pat => !pat && !pat.gameObject.activeSelf);
```
where pat is the iteration variable just like in foreach(var pat in DoctorsPatients).

I just added also the !pat to first filter also out any already destroyed instance before accessing and checking the gameObject of it to prevent any exceptions.

CodePudding user response：

Realized from the answer by DerHugo that I needed to use pat.gameObject.activeSelf(). It appears gameObject is a separate thing from the MonoBehaviour object. I came up with my own solution since I couldnt figure out how to get RemoveAll to cooperate with my foreach loop as DerHugo suggested.

Here's my solution using a standard for loop that allows me to remove elements while iterating:

for(int i = 0; i<DoctorsPatients.Count; i  )
{
    if (!DoctorsPatients[i].gameObject.activeSelf)
    {
        DoctorsPatients.RemoveAt(i);
    }
}