So, was just working on my game project for my masters, and there was this problem I've had dating back to almost two years ago when I was working on another game project that involved teams. Was trying to get a lives system similar to what Crash Bandicoot has to work for me, so when the player's health ran out and they died, the game would take a life.
Legit, for the longest time I could not figure out why the UI wasn't changing like the dude's in the video I was following, and thought it might have to do with me being on a recent version of Unity or something that was causing it to just not work, and was ready to give up today and just stop trying to get that feature in.
I don't know if the universe or God decided to throw me a bone, but my brain just had a light bulb going on moment, and I decided to get rid of the newer version of one of Unity's components for the earlier, legacy version. All of a sudden, my shit's finally working now.
I legit spent so much time wondering why it wasn't working, only for it to be something so simple, that I'd never even considered.