Unity ScriptableObject Loading Behaviour

Question

Let's assume I have the following two ScriptableObjects:

public class Topic : ScriptableObject
{
    public string Title;
    public Sprite TitleImage;
    public Level[] Levels;
}

public class Level : ScriptableObject 
{
    // Various level properties here (strings, Sprite, AudioClip, ...)
}

The game has multiple topics and every topic has multiple levels. Topic and Level exist as .asset files.

Now, when I build a topic selection screen in which I only need Topic.Title and Topic.TitleImage, what will Unity do with the ScriptableObjects referenced in the Levels field? Will that data be loaded?

Empty · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-13 00:25:37Z

2

If Unity has a reference to an object from any other object loaded in memory, it will be loaded into memory.

So if you have anything in your Levels array it will be loaded, yes.

Generally this isn't an issue though, ScriptableObjects should be fairly lightweight, but you should be aware of what your references reference, for example if your Level contains a link to a GameObject prefab, anything that GameObject references will be loaded too, and this goes all the way down the chain.

answered Feb 13, 2019 at 0:25

Empty

5263 silver badges12 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

3 Comments

derHugo Over a year ago

You should have a look at loading resources to avoid that.

André Gasser Over a year ago

@derHugo Thanks for the link. As Resources.Load() is discouraged by Unity all that's left is AssetBundles. So yeah, at the moment I am not sure if I really need this.... Will have a look into it though.

Empty Over a year ago

If you need to have fine tune control of memory (something Unity is sadly kinda bad at) you need to look at AssetBundles for manually loading and unloading specific assets at runtime. But I wouldn't use those unless I really really had to. The references inside a particular Unity Scene aren't loaded either until you load the scene, so that is also an option.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

Unity ScriptableObject Loading Behaviour

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

3 Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related