📔 Ult Cookbook

Sidequest - Debug Mode

3 min read

The UI displayed in the inspector when creating UltEvent logic is just a fancy interface for the real, underlying data.

You can reveal this at any time by switching to Debug mode:

Switching to Debug mode reveals the data for each call. Here I modify the data of the first call to make the 2nd argument use a string instead of a return value.

Underlying Data of Events

Every call and argument in your event has a number that represents its position in the Inspector.

You can hopefully see how these numbers map across in Debug mode:

To edit calls in debug mode, you may want to look at these numbers, or look for the matching ‘Method Name’.

Use Cases - Forcing Return Values (THE RED)

Sometimes, we switch to Debug to overcome limitations of UltEvent’s custom inspector.

In this example, we want to get a Rigidbody and change the connected body on a configurable joint:

The UltEvent editor doesn’t let use use a return value here. That’s because GetComponent can return any type of Component, this includes Rigidbodies, but it could also give us any other type of component (Transforms, Colliders, MeshRenderers, etc…)

Debug mode can be used to forcefully use a return value:

I locate the call for set_connectedBody, and change it from using an Object to using the 1st return value.

This causes the argument to show up as red but will still work perfectly.

Use Cases - Un-forcing Return Values

Sometimes the UltEvent inspector will force us to use return values. This can be overcome again by using Debug mode:

Here, the inspector window forces us to use a return value for the 2nd argument object.Equals, when we want to use a string. Overcame by switching the type from ‘Return Value’ to ‘String’ in debug mode.

Full Breakdown

  1. I select Object.name - and switch the mode to get instead of set.
  2. I select the static object.Equals method - used to compare two values.
    1. I hit a limitation - the UltEvents editor forces us to use a return value here.
    2. I overcome this by switching my Editor to Debug mode. This disables the fancy editor and shows us the raw data. Here’s what I want, with annotations:
    4. With the above info, I can see that the I need to change call 1’s argument 1 from a return value to a string, so that I can type ‘Foo’. I use debug mode to do this.
    5. I switch out of Debug mode.
    6. I add the final call - Enable the IsFoo? GameObject based on if the name of our other object is ‘Foo’.

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