Input in multiple scripts

Is it bad practice to poll for the same input in different scripts? So if I need to know if mouse1 is being clicked in two scripts? Is the best practice to make one class for the input and reference that in other scripts?

 

I don't know about best practice, but if I needed to check for input, I'd probably have a single class handling it and calling stuff on the other scripts.

 

Adding to the goodness from @Brathnann above, you want to identify points where value and meaning is added to the player's input, and centralize those points.

For instance, "Pressing ESCAPE" means nothing in a vacuum.

But in your game "Press ESCAPE" might mean many things: while playing it might mean pause, or cancel, or in the menus it might mean "back up one"

Same thing goes for "FIRE" or "JUMP" or whatever.

For your own sanity, it helps to gather all the input in one place in your program and store that input into variables of your own description in there, variables that make sense based on the state of your program at that moment.

Or even better, have a separate "input for playing" script that is only active when playing, and an "input for menus" script that is only active when in menus.

This way in the future if you decide you want to support touchscreen, or joystick, or any other crazy input device, you only have to change the mapping in that one (or few) module, and all the rest of your code Just Works(tm).

 

Thanks for the replies. I also found this: https://zaumstudio.com/2016/09/14/tackling-input/ seems like a good way to do it if I can wrap my head around event handling/delegates.

 

Unity's input system can handle checking for inputs, even the same inputs, in multiple scripts on the same frame just fine. The issue usually comes down to one of your own sanity once you have input checking spread across half your scripts.