✍️ Let’s Make That Button DO Something

Time to turn our boring button into something interactive!
In this lesson, you’ll write your first real game logic in Unity:
👉 When a player clicks a button → increase a counter → update the UI text.

Let’s click like it’s 1999.

🧰 Step 1: Create the Script

  1. Right-click in the Project window → Create → C# Script
  2. Name it ClickCounter
  3. Drag it onto any GameObject in your scene (like an empty object called GameManager)

💻 Step 2: Write the Click Logic

Open ClickCounter.cs and replace the code with:

using TMPro;
using UnityEngine;

public class ClickCounter : MonoBehaviour
{
    public int clickCount = 0;
    public TextMeshProUGUI clickText;

    public void CountClick()
    {
        clickCount++;
        clickText.text = "Clicks: " + clickCount;
    }
}

Let’s break it down:

  • clickCount keeps track of how many times you’ve clicked
  • clickText is the UI label we update
  • CountClick() is the method that runs when the button is pressed

🧪 Step 3: Hook Up the Button

  1. Select the Click Button in the Hierarchy
  2. In the Inspector, scroll to the Button (Script) component
  3. Under On Click(), click the + icon
  4. Drag the GameObject with your ClickCounter script into the slot
  5. From the dropdown, choose → ClickCounter → CountClick()

Now the button knows what function to run when clicked!

🔗 Step 4: Link the Text Label

Select the GameObject with your ClickCounter script and in the Inspector:

  • Drag your ClickCountText UI element into the Click Text field

This connects the script to the visual label. 🧠

🧪 Test It!

  1. Hit Play
  2. Click the button
  3. Watch the counter go up!

Congrats — you just made a working clicker mechanic! 🎉

🧠 Recap

  • Created a script with a public method
  • Connected that method to a UI button
  • Updated a text label from code
  • Built your first working game mechanic 🔥

🧪 Mini Challenge: Customize It!

  • Add sound or animation when the button is clicked
  • Let the player earn 2 points per click (instead of 1)
  • Change the text color once they reach 10 clicks
  • Add a “Reset” button that sets the count to 0

🚀 What’s Next?

Let’s take that UI to the next level and make it dynamic and polished.
We’ll work on visual updates, better font effects, and auto-scaling.

🖼️ Go to Lesson 15 → Updating Text Dynamically in Unity