Question Previously working OnPointerEnter, click, exit events not triggering anymore

Hey there! I'm creating a backgammon game. I am currently working on moving pieces, with no logic. Yesterday I got to a point where this worked nicely! A piece could be selected, moved to a triangle, a triangle that would be hovered over would turn blue etc. All good.
Today I tried adding a dice. At one point during development, all pointer events regarding triangles stopped working! Here is the code of TriangleClick, the handler for all click events of triangles:

Code (CSharp):

1. using System.Collections;
2. using System.Collections.Generic;
3. using UnityEngine;
4. using UnityEngine.EventSystems;
5.  
6. public class TriangleClick
7.     : MonoBehaviour,
8.         IPointerDownHandler,
9.         IPointerUpHandler,
10.         IPointerClickHandler,
11.         IPointerEnterHandler,
12.         IPointerExitHandler
13. {
14.     public CardGammon board;
15.  
16.     private void Awake() { }
17.  
18.     public void OnPointerDown(PointerEventData eventData) { }
19.  
20.     public void OnPointerUp(PointerEventData eventData) { }
21.  
22.     public void OnPointerClick(PointerEventData eventData)
23.     {
24.         if (board.GetSelectedPiece() == null)
25.         {
26.             return;
27.         }
28.         Triangle clickedTriangle = eventData.pointerEnter.GetComponent<Triangle>();
29.         board.MoveSelectedPieceToTriangle(clickedTriangle);
30.         board.DeselectPiece();
31.     }
32.  
33.     public void OnPointerEnter(PointerEventData eventData)
34.     {
35.         if (board.GetSelectedPiece() == null)
36.         {
37.             return;
38.         }
39.         Triangle hoveredTriangle = eventData.pointerEnter.GetComponent<Triangle>();
40.         //Don't highlight it if it contains the piece
41.         if (hoveredTriangle.piecesOnTriangle.Contains(board.GetSelectedPiece()))
42.         {
43.             return;
44.         }
45.         Material triangleMaterial = this.GetComponent<Renderer>().material;
46.         triangleMaterial.color = Color.blue;
47.     }
48.  
49.     public void OnPointerExit(PointerEventData eventData)
50.     {
51.         if (board.GetSelectedPiece() == null)
52.         {
53.             return;
54.         }
55.         Material triangleMaterial = this.GetComponent<Renderer>().material;
56.         triangleMaterial.color = Color.white;
57.     }
58. }
59.  

What could I have done? Just as a mention, all the 24 triangles are different game objects. They are not prefabs as I wanted to set them up together with the board from the start without instantiating them in the code (maybe not optimal, I know). All triangles have meshcolliders - they are basically unchanged. There is no problem with the event system, I think, because highlighting pieces and dragging the dice work fine (other pointer events).

Let me know what else I could provide!

 

Follow the chain of events, find out where it is broken. You could even make a new random stray button, hook it up, does it work?

Is something clickable in front of it? Transparent Text? etc.

Time to start debugging! Here is how you can begin your exciting new debugging adventures:

You must find a way to get the information you need in order to reason about what the problem is.

Once you understand what the problem is, you may begin to reason about a solution to the problem.

What is often happening in these cases is one of the following:

- the code you think is executing is not actually executing at all
- the code is executing far EARLIER or LATER than you think
- the code is executing far LESS OFTEN than you think
- the code is executing far MORE OFTEN than you think
- the code is executing on another GameObject than you think it is
- you're getting an error or warning and you haven't noticed it in the console window

To help gain more insight into your problem, I recommend liberally sprinkling

Debug.Log()

statements through your code to display information in realtime.

Doing this should help you answer these types of questions:

- is this code even running? which parts are running? how often does it run? what order does it run in?
- what are the names of the GameObjects or Components involved?
- what are the values of the variables involved? Are they initialized? Are the values reasonable?
- are you meeting ALL the requirements to receive callbacks such as triggers / colliders (review the documentation)

Knowing this information will help you reason about the behavior you are seeing.

You can also supply a second argument to Debug.Log() and when you click the message, it will highlight the object in scene, such as

Debug.Log("Problem!",this);

If your problem would benefit from in-scene or in-game visualization, Debug.DrawRay() or Debug.DrawLine() can help you visualize things like rays (used in raycasting) or distances.

You can also call Debug.Break() to pause the Editor when certain interesting pieces of code run, and then study the scene manually, looking for all the parts, where they are, what scripts are on them, etc.

You can also call GameObject.CreatePrimitive() to emplace debug-marker-ish objects in the scene at runtime.

You could also just display various important quantities in UI Text elements to watch them change as you play the game.

Visit Google for how to see console output from builds. If you are running a mobile device you can also view the console output. Google for how on your particular mobile target, such as this answer or iOS: https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-to-capturing-device-logs-on-ios.529920/ or this answer for Android: https://forum.unity.com/threads/how-to-capturing-device-logs-on-android.528680/

If you are working in VR, it might be useful to make your on onscreen log output, or integrate one from the asset store, so you can see what is happening as you operate your software.

Another useful approach is to temporarily strip out everything besides what is necessary to prove your issue. This can simplify and isolate compounding effects of other items in your scene or prefab.

Here's an example of putting in a laser-focused Debug.Log() and how that can save you a TON of time wallowing around speculating what might be going wrong:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/coroutine-missing-hint-and-error.1103197/#post-7100494

"When in doubt, print it out!(tm)" - Kurt Dekker (and many others)

Note: the

print()

function is an alias for Debug.Log() provided by the MonoBehaviour class.