How do I access variables using namespaces?

Question

I've got a whole lot of scripts, none of them so far use namespaces. But as I get more and more scripts to deal with I thought it would be a wise idea to start using namespaces. I've never used them before so I'm having a little bit of difficulty. I've declared the namespace in one of my scripts:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;

namespace Train.OnBoardChecker {
    public class OnBoardChecker : MonoBehaviour {
        [SerializeField]private bool isOnBoard;

        public void OnTriggerEnter (Collider col) {
            if(col.gameObject.tag == "Character"){
                isOnBoard = true;
            }
        }

        public void OnTriggerExit (Collider col) {
            if(col.gameObject.tag == "Character"){
                isOnBoard = false;
            }
        }
    }
}

And in my main train script, I've tried to access the 'isOnBoard' bool from the OnBoardChecker script. I was told there were a few ways of doing this, this is what I did:

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using Train.OnBoardChecker;

namespace Train {
    public class TrainSystems : MonoBehaviour {

        void Start () {

        }

        void Update () {

        }
    }
}

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding the whole namespace thing, but I can't access my variables from that script. I've making the variable public, and private (with serialzefield). I've tried these, with the public and private variables, and I even tried making the voids public and not public:

(namespace onboard checker) > OnBoardChecker.OnBoardChecker.insertvariablenamehere
OnBoardChecker.varname

What am I doing wrong, how do I access my variables from the OnBoardChecker script in the TrainSystems script with the namespaces without having to make it public, kind of like the standard assets does.

Answer 1

You can't access that variable without an actual object of type OnBoardChecker

So you will do something like:

OnBoardChecker myChecker = get some reference to the object/create a new() one

myChecker.isOnBoard; // or if it is private use a get method for it.

What you are trying to do is get a static member of the class. A static member does need a instance of the class to exist.