Unity Game Development — Optimizing Code with Switch Statements

Previously, I worked on a script to create modular power-ups. The code uses conditional statements to control which type of power-up the player collects. If we decide to add more and more types of player upgrades, this code will get long and messy.

Enter the switch() statement.

The switch statement is a selection statement that chooses a single switch section to execute from a list of candidates based on a pattern match with the match expression.

To illustrate this definition better, take a look at the following syntax.

1. This variable can be any non-null expression. I’m using an int for the example.
2. The syntax for this statement begins with the keyword: switch().
3. The expression to be evaluated by the switch statement goes inside the parenthesis.
4. Using the case keyword, we add potential candidates followed by a Colon (:). The candidates have to match the Type of expression that the switch statement is evaluating. When the evaluation finds a match, it executes the code block that follows it. Every case must end with a break; keyword.
5. The default keyword executes code if it does not find other matches.

Armed with this knowledge, I’ll make some changes to the power-up code I created previously. I will also add a third power-up called Shields.

Currently, my power-up behaves like this:

Now that I want to add a third option to my list, I could add another else if() statement checking for if PType == 2 . But when evaluating a single condition, the switch() method is often a better choice.

To change our code, all we have to do is the following.