noio

noio, 4 months ago

I turned it into a Unity package and it's open source:

https://github.com/noio/games.noio.input-hints

noio, 4 months ago

In Kingdom, my first larger game, I just stored the file names of the prefabs (as strings)

This is

1️⃣ not very safe if you move files around
2️⃣ not so efficient in terms of space!

noio, 4 months ago

For Cloud Gardens, I wizened up, and built a 'Database' of integer IDs for each object type, like:

Seeds DB:
1: Vine Seed
2: Oak Tree Seed
3: .. etc.

and

Props DB
1: Shipping Container
2: Rusty Barrel
3: .. etc

noio, 4 months ago

This duplicates a lot of functionality, even though they're all
UnityEngine.Object (Components, GameObject, ScriptableObject)

So now I just store ONE database for the whole game, with all types of objects

Database.Get<Enemy>(3) returns an Enemy prefab with ID 3, if it exists

noio, 4 months ago

Prefabs get a PrefabID component, and SO's have a ScriptableObjectWithID subclass
Both are automatically indexed

This has many advantages 🥳

e.g. Object Pooling! IDs are useful there because you need to know which pool to return an object to

noio, 4 months ago

PrefabId has an additional "Instance Id" that is incremented when the object is retrieved from a Pool.

This is essential to see if a reference to a Pooled object is still valid (or whether the object was reincarnated in the mean time)

noio, 4 months ago

Starting from a specific solution deeply integrated into the engine, I now have a handful of scripts that I can copy from project to project.

I imagine many of you ended up with similar systems, let me know!

(I honestly think Unity should have this built in but eh )

noio, 4 months ago

@ciro yeah I always figured that was the 'real' solution but I bounced off on that restructuring.

➕ and there's the thing where creates duplicate 'instances' of your ScriptableObjects in a build.. (one for each bundle?)

noio, 4 months ago

@jonasreich totally, but the image you are replying to is the Id shown ON the Prefab that it refers to. It's just to verify that the object has an Id.

Otherwise they're never displayed.

noio, 4 months ago

@ciro looking at addressables again: yeah I should probably give it another shot! 🤭

Putting everything into one big bundle should give similar behavior.

Because assets in the same bundle can just be direct references and don't need an Async load?

noio, 4 months ago

@ciro though I've got a question..

How would you go about retrieving the Address (what you call GUID?) for an Instance of a prefab?

(e.g. for finding which Pool to return object to)

Then you still need an additional component that stores the Address on the GameObject, no?

noio, 4 months ago

@ciro exactly :)

So I'm now thinking even if I were to switch to Addressables, I'd still end up keeping most of my current system for linking to Prefabs/'Templates' as you call it.

noio, 5 months ago

@YinYinFalcon I did make them procedurally! Haha that worked also.

But now I’m using MicroVerse Roads (a Unity plugin) and it seems easier to just bite the bullet and hand build a small set ☺️

Also more maintainable. In 8 months when I forget how all of this works at least I’ll just be able to go in blender and edit models

noio, 5 months ago

@jalict yeah, what's between them is just roads and those are easy to generate along a spline with fixed tangents at the end points.

I used Dreamteck before, now I'm using MicroVerse.Roads but they achieve the same things of generating a mesh along a spline path

noio, 6 months ago

@Robin_Van_Ee i don't know i don't see why not.. it's built on top of Unity Terrains and I don't see them changing that any time soon :)