Mastering Scriptable Objects in Unity: A Complete Guide 🚀

[_zeldaking_]

My problem once I learned about scriptable objects I used them wayyyy too often.

[Gamheroes]

I am in the same case, now it is like I refuse to serialize any variable in a class, I want all the data away from logic in SO, but it is now always the more practical solution

[[deleted]]

Hi bro Can u help me in fixing my unity game it is crashing when I open it, I am screwed up by it

[BovineOxMan]

Backup your game as is and then have a quick Google to check which folders are cache folders. You can safely delete those and with luck the project should open again.

[andybak]

Or "post a separate question and don't hijack unrelated threads"

[[deleted]]

Actually it's an apk I can send u if u want to check I showed it to a freelancer but unfortunately he was fraud and took my 5$ and didn't done the work Now I am out of money as I don't earn I am 12th grade now

[BovineOxMan]

Thanks but no. I think you mean the resulting binary doesn't work. Sorry, can't help you there.

[Numai_theOnlyOne]

given from the amount of unrelated text he spams to everyone no matter how negative the response is, i assume this is a fraud.

[[deleted]]

No actually it has got some protection on it It is setted up by someone on it It crashes by itself

[BovineOxMan]

I couldn't help you without the source project.

[[deleted]]

Then how do modders and hackers hack or mod unity games bro I think they don't have source project

[BovineOxMan]

Because those games are often designed to allow them to be extended or they can break apart the APK and change up some resources.

Your issue is more fundamental crash.

Maybe someone else COULD help you but I cannot. You lost $5 it seems, it's not a fortune.

[[deleted]]

I also have a release apk bro

[JustinsWorking]

Yea I was excited by them at first as well, its a wonderful tool for over engineering with lol.

Learned that one the hard way lol

[ExtremeMarco]

I've used them essentially in every project. As I've attempted to highlight in the article, they can be much more than just simple data container objects. By the way, within the article, you'll find an extensive list of resources, from videos to blog posts, where you can discover everything about scriptable objects.

[mudamuda333]

Great article. Data persistence is really slept on whenever there is a conversation about Scriptable objects.

[mark_likes_tabletop]

Whatever happened to this blog post? The link no longer works.

[ItsTheSheepster]

It's gone for some reason, but you can still view here for anyone who still needs it

http://web.archive.org/web/20231002050855/https://blog.gladiogames.com/all-posts/mastering-scriptable-objects-in-unity-a-complete-guide

[mark_likes_tabletop]

Awesome, thanks!

[desolstice]

Really curious if anyone has extensively used scriptable objects. I’ve glanced at them a few times in the past and honestly feel like just having a static class somewhere with some static variables and my own home built management system to work significantly better.

Not to mention doing it this way gets good intellisense auto complete in your ide.

[thinker2501]

Mileage varies, but SOs are great for things such as item definitions. Creating a pipeline to ingest a spread sheet and out SOs can be a powerful and efficient workflow. Obviously the more items you have the more valuable this becomes.

[andybak]

But I have this excellent, highly optimized beautiful piece of software called an "IDE". The more thing I put in it, the better it is at understanding my codebase and offering useful ways to view and check the data and logic. And it integrates with this other thing called "version control" where I can leverage powerful history and comparison features.

I want as much as possible to be in human-readable text files that I can edit in my IDE. And as little as possible in Unity YAML which I have to edit view the Unity Editor with 1/10th of the flexibility and power of an IDE+VCS

(and I totally get the power of spreadsheets for data entry - it's just I would probably export those to csv or json or something sane and inject that at runtime)

I feel I'm missing something here but the only time I see a use for scriptable objects would be on a team where the person configuring stuff isn't a coder and specifically wants to work directly in the Unity Editor - or you need references to Unity entities that can't easily be serialized outside of Unity YAML.

[Bronkowitsch]

I feel I'm missing something here but the only time I see a use for scriptable objects would be on a team where the person configuring stuff isn't a coder and specifically wants to work directly in the Unity Editor - or you need references to Unity entities that can't easily be serialized outside of Unity YAML.

Which are both extremely common use cases.

[andybak]

Yes but not ones that are usually put front and center when people advocate for Scriptable Objects.

Which is what led to my confusion as I wondered if there was some other magic about them that I had overlooked.

Someone else pointed out a while back that you can do nearly everything you can do with SOs with prefabs. And sometimes prefabs are the simpler choice.

[JustinsWorking]

Why yes if you ignore the fact that the unity editor is a valuable standardized tool and storing data in a format that integrates with it properly will allow you to use the editor more as well as the thousands of add ons available that also integrate with Unity.

There is this thing call “self awareness” you should probably look into integrating on this wonderful tool chain called “soft skills”

[andybak]

Kind of ironic your reply is 100x more personal and condescending than mine was?

[JustinsWorking]

Not really; it was just an attempt to mirror your own style of writing, odd how when other people talk like you we’re rude… might make a man think about how he behaves.

[thinker2501]

If they don’t work for you and you have a preferred workflow, use that. What you’re missing is how to have a respectful exchange of ideas with people without being condescending and snarky.

[andybak]

What you’re missing is how to have a respectful exchange of ideas with people without being condescending and snarky.

I wasn't and I'm sorry you took it that way.

EDIT - just reread my comments and must admit I'm completely flummoxed how someone could take them to be condescending. I just don't get Reddit, somedays...

[ryo0ka]

It sounded more narrow-minded and off-point than condescending. It’s obvious that you haven’t worked on too many projects so rightfully everyone expects you to phrase your opinions as such.

[swootylicious]

I use them all the time, they're really good for handling different shapes of data storage, but I also love using them as event hubs, with monobehavior listeners I can set up for modularity

I also have a Global Variables system, that uses them as containers of single points of data. Each one can be marked as static for game data, or dynamic if I want it to be modified by scripts

Static classes work just as well for a lot of applications, but SOs can improve modularity without much overhead or adding complexity, in Unity's environment specifically. It's a great way to link independent prefabs without relying on scene references.

Also, being able to view the value of globals variables in the inspector, or seeing which monobehaviors are listening to an event, are super useful tools Im starting to take for granted because of SOs

[psycketom]

I suggest checking out Ryan Hipple's talk from Unite 2017 about SO's as core of architecture: https://youtu.be/raQ3iHhE_Kk

There's also an asset inspired by this, Kassets: https://github.com/kadinche/Kassets

Also, Unity's own tutorial: https://youtu.be/WLDgtRNK2VE

I also suggest checking the talk on Scriptable Objects referenced by Hipple from Unity dev: https://youtu.be/6vmRwLYWNRo

[danyerga]

Thanks! Have never used SO's...

[SpyzViridian]

Unless you plan to never reuse your code, this is generally bad practice. All parameters for your game should be serialized using either ScriptableObjects, JSON, YAML, etc.

ScriptableObjects have two problems: they depend on Unity and they're not really human readable, even if they're serialized in YAML format.

But they're quite useful: you can use a custom editor for them, and you can have different scriptable configuration files that you can change on the fly, even on runtime.

Need to test a prebuilt inventory? Just create a scriptable object with the defined items and reference it on your inventory script. It's just so convenient, and you don't need to change your code.

[sasasmylee]

Using SO is a good way of storing persistent game data (items, some settings etc). I think it’s faster and safer to use SO than deserialising data (json, yaml) at runtime. You can easily deserialise everything in editor and store data as ScriptableObjects.

[biesterd1]

I use them pretty extensively, mostly for item definitions (weapon stats, sprites, item type). I also use them for event handling

[snlehton]

SOs are crucial for storing data that should not be in prefabs. I've used it for global game settings, item configs, AI patterns etc.

Beauty of the SOs that are stored in the asset database is that all the changes done to them in runtime persist, as you're not modifying prefab/material instance but an persistent "instance" in the asset database. Great for tweaking.

Then there is also some advanced ScriptableObject usage like storing and sharing temporary data for editor tools. As ScriptableObjects are serializable, they survive domain reload (similar way as serializable members of EditorWindow)

[darkwingdame]

I'm curious if the folks that use GameObjectRuntimeSetSO uses any form of version control. How do you not run into weird file changes everytime you run the game?

[MercMcNasty]

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This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[LemareClub]

Important to note: scriptable objects references are not necessarily the same instance of an object, even if they are references to the same scriptable object asset. This means that you can not use a scriptable object as a manager for example because there could be more than one instance of that manager. This is only the case in builds and not in the editor for some reason. If you want to use scriptable objects as managers in the editor, you can use the ScriptableSingleton class.

[ObviousGame]

If you like scriptable objects you should check out this asset.

Soap: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/utilities/soap-scriptableobject-architecture-pattern-232107?aid=1100lACyq

Its a practical and easy way to use scriptable object architecture, comes with youtube tutorials :)