hi guys, weird thing happening to me rn.
i've created a text object that instantiates every time the player's collider collides with an NPC's, and destroys itself when colliding = null. this works fine, however, every time i start playing, the prefab instantiates twice and stays there. if the player collides with the NPC, it instantiates a third prefab and destroys itself when the player moves and the triggering = null, however the 2 prefabs remain no matter what.
they only destroy themselves when i stop playing.
here are the scripts for the player and the spawner (the NPC's script has no reference to the spawner):
Spawner:

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

public class TextSpawner : MonoBehaviour
{
    public GameObject floatingTextPrefab;
    GameObject newText;
    void Start()
    {
        
    }

    public void Update()
    {
        
    }

    public void OnTriggering()
	{
        
        Vector3 spawnPosition = new Vector3(-3.75f, 2.5f, -133.1f);
        newText = (GameObject)Instantiate (floatingTextPrefab, spawnPosition, Quaternion.identity);
    }
    public void OnNotTriggering()
	{
        Destroy(newText);
    }
}

player:

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

public class Player : MonoBehaviour
{
    private GameObject triggeringNpc;
    private bool triggering = false;
    
    // public GameObject FloatingTextPrefab;
    void Start()
	{

	}
    
    void Update()
    {
        if (triggering = true)  
        {
            if (Input.GetKey("e"))
            {
                print("player is interacting with " + triggeringNpc);

            }
        }

    }

    //this sentence means that the program will check if the player is triggering with an NPC
    void OnTriggerEnter(Collider other)
    {
       
        //this statement comes to check if the 'other' (which is the object we are colliding with) is tagged as "NPC", triggering is going to happen
        if(other.tag == "NPC")
        {
            triggering = true;
            //this next line means the the other thing we are interacting with and it's definition is the triggering NPC private variable. 
            triggeringNpc = other.gameObject;
        }
        FindObjectOfType<TextSpawner>().OnTriggering();
    }

    //this sentence means that the program will check if the player isn't triggering with an NPC
    void OnTriggerExit(Collider other)
    {
        if (other.tag == "NPC")
        {
            triggering = false;
            triggeringNpc = null;
            FindObjectOfType<TextSpawner>().OnNotTriggering();

        }
    }
  
}

FindObjectOfType<TextSpawner>().OnTriggering();

You are calling this regardless of if “other.tag == ”NPC". Thats at least not supposed to be, as its not how the OnTriggerExit-method is implemented. I suppose that might also be the reason why the object is spawned many times.

On another not, I think this implementation is backwards. I would not tie this behaviour to the player, instead I would hookup the TextSpawner so that it is triggered by the NPCs collision-response to the player. The issue with having this code in the player is that if you keep adding features, you might end up with a giant collision-handling routine inside the Player-class, which could much more easily be refactored out into individual collison-handlers that could all belong to their respective scripts (truthfully, I belive the TextSpawner could simply have its own OnTriggerEnter-method as long as its attached to the NPC gameobject).

@Juliean YOU ARE A GENIUS!

thank you so much! i knew there must've been a problem with it triggering the ground or something like that, so i checked the tags instead of doing what you said.

as for the script belonging on the NPC, you're probably right. i'll do that as well.