Programming Errors — Unity Debug.Log

Introduction — Project Setup

In this arti­cle we will learn how to use con­sole mes­sages to ana­lyze how our code works and even­tu­al­ly detect and cor­rect bugs.

To start we are going to cre­ate a new project in Uni­ty, in my case I am going to call it Debugging.

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ABOUT UNITY

ABOUT BLENDER

Fig. 1: Ini­tial scene to study the Debug.Log method.

In the process of detec­tion and cor­rec­tion of bugs we are going to use main­ly the con­sole of Uni­ty, in that win­dow will print mes­sages that we will strate­gi­cal­ly place in our code.

Fig. 2: Con­sole tab in Uni­ty 3D.

If the con­sole win­dow is not active, you can open it from the Win­dow tab as shown in fig­ure 3.

Fig. 3: Path to open the con­sole in Uni­ty 3D.

The next step is to cre­ate a new C# Script, we can do it from the project win­dow as shown in fig­ure 4. I'm going to give it the name "Debug­ging".

Click here to know more about Scripts in Pro­gram­ming

Fig. 4: Cre­ate new C# Script.
Fig. 5: The C# script is called Debugging.

For the code of our Script to run in gen­er­al it is not enough to cre­ate the Script, it must also be assigned to at least one GameOb­ject of the hier­ar­chy. Let's cre­ate an Emp­ty GameOb­ject and give it a mean­ing­ful name.

Then with that GameOb­ject select­ed we drag the Script towards the inspec­tor to assign it (fig­ure 8).

Fig. 6: Cre­ate new Emp­ty GameOb­ject in the hierarchy.
Fig. 7: We give the GameOb­ject a name.
Fig. 8: The Script cre­at­ed pre­vi­ous­ly in the inspec­tor is assigned.
Fig. 9: The Debug­ging Script has been assigned in the inspector.

Programming C# Unity — Debug.Log

When open­ing the Script (fig­ure 10) we see that there is some code that is writ­ten by default. The basic libraries are import­ed and we have the Start and Update meth­ods which run automatically.

In my chan­nel there is a video about what a pro­gram­ming method is and also an arti­cle on this page.

Fig. 10: Default con­tent of a C# script.

We are going to write an instruc­tion in the Start method. This instruc­tion is the exe­cu­tion of the Log method of the Debug class, to which we will pass the mes­sage to print.

As can be seen in fig­ure 11, the instruc­tion is:

Debug.Log("Este men­saje apare­cerá en la consola");

Which means: "This mes­sage will appear in console".

Fig. 11: We write the Debug.Log instruc­tion in the Start method.

We enter the game mode to test the Script, for this we use the Play but­ton of the Edi­tor (fig­ure 12).

Fig. 12: But­ton to enter the game mode.

Fig. 13: In the low­er left cor­ner of the pro­gram the con­sole mes­sages also appear.

You can see that the mes­sage appears in the low­er left cor­ner of the pro­gram with­out hav­ing the con­sole open.

In fig­ure 14 I sep­a­rat­ed the con­sole win­dow to bet­ter visu­al­ize the information.

Fig. 14: Mes­sage in con­sole, on the right appears a num­ber indi­cat­ing the num­ber of times the mes­sage is sent.

Let's see what hap­pens if we put a mes­sage in the Update method.

Fig. 15: Anoth­er mes­sage is placed in the Update method.

To the right of the mes­sage is a num­ber indi­cat­ing the num­ber of times the mes­sage is printed.

As can be seen in fig­ure 16, the mes­sage of the Update method has been print­ed 82 at the time of cap­ture while in fig­ure 17 the mes­sage has been print­ed 350 times.

Fig. 16: Cap­tur­ing mes­sages in the first sec­onds of the game.
Fig. 17: Cap­tur­ing the mes­sages a few moments later.

Using Variables

The mes­sages that we want to print in con­sole can be stored in vari­ables and the result is the same.

Fig. 18: Two strings are defined with the mes­sages and placed in the methods.

Let's cre­ate some more vari­ables, an inte­ger, a boolean and a float. These three types of vari­ables togeth­er with the String are the basic types of vari­ables that we are going to use in any project.

In the chan­nel there is a video about "What is a Vari­able in Pro­gram­ming" and I also wrote an arti­cle for this page.

Fig. 19: A vari­able is defined as inte­ger, bool and float, each with values.

As can be seen in fig­ure 19, we are going to declare them and ini­tial­ize them with a val­ue. We can do this in dif­fer­ent points of the Script, but we will do it at the begin­ning of the class, before the Start method.

Then we are going to exe­cute three Debug.Log meth­ods pass­ing as para­me­ter the variables.

Fig. 20: Debug.Log is exe­cut­ed with the new variables.

When you enter game mode, all four mes­sages appear on the console.

Fig. 21: The con­sole dis­plays the val­ue of each variable.

In pre­vi­ous ver­sions it was nec­es­sary to exe­cute the ToString() method in order to print the val­ue of a vari­able that is not a string, as shown in fig­ure 22, this can be done but is no longer nec­es­sary, you can pass the vari­ables directly.

Fig. 22: Exe­cu­tion of ToString() that con­verts the val­ue of the vari­able into text.

We are going to define 4 new vari­ables, one of each type and give it dif­fer­ent val­ues, as shown in fig­ure 23.

Fig. 23: More vari­ables are defined to per­form operations. 

We can make the con­sole print the result of oper­a­tions with vari­ables, as shown in fig­ure 24.

If we com­pare the val­ues in fig­ure 23 with the con­sole prints seen in fig­ure 25, we can ver­i­fy this.

Fig. 24: Oper­a­tions are entered in the para­me­ter of the Debug.Log methods.

Fig. 25: The results of these oper­a­tions are print­ed on the console.

It is also pos­si­ble to con­cate­nate dif­fer­ent types of vari­ables and print a message.

Fig. 26: Dif­fer­ent types of vari­able can be con­cate­nat­ed to form the message.
Fig. 27: Mes­sage made up of dif­fer­ent types of variables.

Frame Counter

Pre­vi­ous­ly we placed a Debug.Log instruc­tion in the Update method, which con­tained a fixed message. 

We are going to print a mes­sage that is going to change frame to frame.

Fig. 28: An inte­ger is defined to count the num­ber of frames that pass.

To start with we define an inte­ger to count the frames and ini­tial­ize it in the val­ue 0.

Let's con­cate­nate the mes­sage "This is the frame: " (includ­ing the final space), with the counter value.

After dis­play­ing the mes­sage in con­sole, we increase the counter so that in the next frame it indi­cates the next frame number. 

These two instruc­tions are shown in Fig­ure 29.

Fig. 29: A mes­sage is print­ed with the frames count and then the counter is increased.

Fig­ures 30 and 31 show the exe­cu­tion of this code at two dif­fer­ent times.

Fig. 30: Mes­sages in the first sec­onds of execution.
Fig. 31: Mes­sages appear­ing moments later.

Elements of an Array or Integer Vector

Now we are going to apply the Debug.Log Method to ana­lyze the ele­ments of an Array.

An Array is an ordered struc­ture of data of some kind upon which oper­a­tions can be made. This data struc­ture is like the math­e­mat­i­cal vector.

First we are going to declare an Array of inte­gers, this is sim­i­lar to declar­ing an inte­ger only by adding the square brack­ets after the type, as seen in Fig­ure 32.

At the same point we are going to cre­ate the Array with the val­ues seen in fig­ure 32.

Fig. 32: A vec­tor of inte­gers with dif­fer­ent val­ues is defined.

We are going to read the Array in the Start method, first we are going to write a mes­sage indi­cat­ing the size of the vector.

To go through the Array we use a "for" loop that starts from 0 to the amount of Array ele­ments minus one.

Inside the for loop we are going to print a mes­sage in con­sole using Debug.Log and con­cate­nat­ing text with the val­ues of the variable.

for loop in c# to detect programming errors
Fig. 33: In the Start method we are going to ana­lyze the array using Debug.Log.

In this way using the con­sole we can study the array and its ele­ments, as can be seen in fig­ure 34.

Fig. 34: Con­sole mes­sages that give us infor­ma­tion about the Array.

Print the result of the execution of a Method

If we have a method that returns a vari­able, we can apply it as a para­me­ter of the Debug.Log method, as shown in fig­ure 35.

The method "UnMeto­doEx­ce­lente" is defined which returns a string.

The exe­cu­tion of this code is shown in fig­ure 36.

Fig. 35: A method is defined that returns a string to print mes­sage in console.
Fig. 36: The mes­sage con­sists of the string returned by the method.

The same could be done with a method that requires para­me­ters, as shown in fig­ure 37.

Fig. 37: A para­me­ter is added to the method.
Fig. 38: The mes­sage depends on the para­me­ter we give to the method.

Debug.Log to analyze the result of an if statement

The flow of our pro­gram can move in dif­fer­ent ways depend­ing on the data, for exam­ple in a sen­tence if, the flow of the pro­gram will take one of two pos­si­ble paths depend­ing on the Boolean vari­able being evaluated. 

In fig­ure 39 we define the if sen­tence, which will exe­cute one method or the oth­er. Each method prints its char­ac­ter­is­tic message.

Fig. 39: Two meth­ods are defined, one of which will be called randomly.

In fig­ures 40 and 41 we see the exe­cu­tion in two dif­fer­ent moments of the game.

Fig. 40: In this case the Bad­Path method was executed.
Fig. 41: In this case the "Good­Path" method was executed. 

Conclusion

The Debug.Log method is used to write mes­sages in the console.

By strate­gi­cal­ly plac­ing these mes­sages in our code we are able to visu­al­ize the flow of the pro­gram, get infor­ma­tion about the state of our vari­ables and objects.

The Debug.Log method takes as para­me­ter a vari­able that can be in prin­ci­ple string, bool, int or float, the basic types of vari­ables that we have ana­lyzed in oth­er articles.

These para­me­ters can be deliv­ered in dif­fer­ent ways, for exam­ple it is pos­si­ble to cre­ate a mes­sage con­cate­nat­ing vari­ables, as the result of a method, enter the vari­ables direct­ly or enter the oper­a­tions whose results we want to be printed.

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