This week, a perplexing issue arose in our game development project involving the card hand display in the pause menu. Despite the apparent simplicity of the feature, it refused to function correctly, leading to significant frustration. The root of the problem was that the script responsible for managing the card hand display was inexplicably turning off during gameplay. This anomaly was particularly detrimental to the user experience, as it directly interfered with gameplay by disrupting the player's ability to strategize during pauses, a core feature of our game.

After several days of meticulous debugging, I discovered that the issue was linked to the lifecycle methods of Unity—specifically the Awake function. It turned out that the Awake function, which was supposed to initialize settings only once, was incorrectly configured to disable the script under certain conditions unintentionally. The solution was straightforward yet critical: I moved the initialization code from the Awake function to the Start function. This change ensured that the necessary components and settings were correctly set up each time the game scene started, rather than just once, preventing the script from turning off unexpectedly. This adjustment had an immediate positive impact on the user experience, as it allowed for consistent access to the pause menu and its features throughout gameplay. Players could now reliably use the card hand display to plan their strategies during breaks in the action, significantly enhancing the game's playability and their overall satisfaction.

Author: Fraser Paterson

Posted on 5/2/2024