How to dynamically construct a reference to a game object by name

Question

I have game objects tagged MenuOption0, MenuOption1, MenuOption2, etc. I want to keep a currentIndex var, which gets incremented each time the user swipes on the controller. That swipe should increment the currentIndex var, and switch the reference to a new game object, whose text color will be changed.

This is what I'm trying as a test:

GameObject testText = GameObject.Find("MenuOption" + 4);
TextMeshProUGUI thisTextMesh = testText.GetComponent<TextMeshProUGUI>(); 
thisTextMesh.color = colorWhite;

How do I dynamically construct a reference to MenuOption1,2,3,4,etc? Or is there a better way to handle this without writing a big long conditional?

Answer 1

Maybe I'm misunderstanding you but if you have a GameObject and Color for each menu option, I would make a custom class to hold the data and then make an array of that class.

For example

using UnityEngine;

[System.Serializable]
public class MenuOption
{
    public Color optionColor;
    public GameObject optionPrefab;
}

then you can put it into an array, which you can do in the inspector or via code.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class Switcher : MonoBehaviour
{
    public List<MenuOption> options;
    private int optionIndex = 0;

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update ()
    {
        //
        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.A))
        {
            optionIndex += -1;
        }

        if (Input.GetKeyDown(KeyCode.D))
        {
            optionIndex += 1;
        }


        Debug.Log(options[optionIndex].optionColor);
        Debug.Log(options[optionIndex].optionPrefab);
    }
}

Make sure you keep the index between 0 and however many options you have, otherwise you will get "Argument is out of range." errors.