Implementing Inheritance and Polymorphism in Unity Code

Implementing inheritance and polymorphism in code allows you to create more specialized classes based on existing classes, and treat objects of different classes as objects of a common base class. This promotes code reuse, flexibility, and extensibility. Here's an example of implementing inheritance and polymorphism in Unity:

Inheritance

Inheritance is achieved by creating a new class (child or derived class) based on an existing class (parent or base class). The child class inherits the attributes and methods of the parent class and can add its own unique attributes and methods or modify the existing ones. Here's an example:

// Base class
public class Shape
{
    public virtual void Draw()
    {
        Debug.Log("Drawing a shape...");
    }
}

// Derived class
public class Circle : Shape
{
    public override void Draw()
    {
        Debug.Log("Drawing a circle...");
    }
}

In this example, the class 'Shape' is the base class, and the class 'Circle' is derived from it. The method 'Draw()' is defined in both classes, but the class 'Circle' overrides the method to provide its own implementation. This allows you to specialize the behavior of the class 'Circle' while maintaining the shared behavior defined in the class 'Shape'.

Polymorphism

Polymorphism allows objects of different classes to be treated as objects of a common base class, providing flexibility and allowing for code that operates on objects generically. Here's an example:

void DrawShapes(Shape[] shapes)
{
    foreach (Shape shape in shapes)
    {
        shape.Draw();
    }
}

// Usage
Shape[] shapes = new Shape[] { new Circle(), new Shape() };
DrawShapes(shapes);

In this example, the method 'DrawShapes()' accepts an array of objects 'Shape'. It iterates over the array and calls the method 'Draw()' on each object. The array contains an object 'Circle' and a base object 'Shape'. However, since the class 'Circle' overrides the method 'Draw()', the appropriate implementation for each object is invoked based on its actual type at runtime. This demonstrates polymorphism in action.

Conclusion

By leveraging inheritance and polymorphism in your Unity code, you can create specialized classes based on existing ones, define shared behaviors in base classes, and write code that operates on objects generically, providing flexibility and promoting code reuse.