Airship Scriptable Objects

AirshipScriptableObject is a class you can derive from to create objects that live independently of GameObjects. This allows you to save data as an asset to use at runtime.

Like ScriptableObject in Unity, they are accessible from scenes and assets within a project.

Changing values in a Scriptable Object requires a full publish (as it is an asset) instead of a code publish to update, if you need a value that can be changed via a code publish, you should be storing it in code.

// This will show in Create -> ScriptableObjects -> Example Data Object by default
@CreateAssetMenu()
export default class ExampleDataObject extends AirshipScriptableObject {
    public message = "Hello, world!";
    
    protected Awake() {
         // This will be fired when the scriptable object is first referenced/created.
         // The properties of this object will be set up on Awake
         print(this.message, "from the example scriptable object awake!");   
    }
    
    protected OnDestroy() {
         // This will be called if:
         //  - A CreateInstance() ScriptableObject is destroyed
         print("This object was destroyed!");
    }
}

This allows you to save data as an asset to use at runtime. This can be useful for global data shared between objects, avoiding the necessity for duplicate data.

Referencing a ScriptableObject in your game

As an example, we can use a ScriptableObject to create "templates" for NPCs we want to spawn

@CreateAssetMenu()
export default class NPCTemplate extends AirshipScriptableObject {
	@Header("Metadata")
	public name = "Example NPC";
	@Min(1)
	public maxHealth = 100;

	@Header("Appearance")
	public customPrefab?: GameObject;
}

Then we can create it using the menu item:

Since NPCTemplate has CreateAssetMenu on it, it will show up here by default.

The resulting ScriptableObject - we can now set a name, the health and even a custom prefab if need be.

Then to reference the ScriptableObject

import { Airship } from "@Easy/Core/Shared/Airship";
import NPCTemplate from "Code/ScriptableObjects/NPCTemplate";

export default class NPCCharacterSpawner extends AirshipBehaviour {
	// Just like referencing other AirshipBehaviours
	// We can also reference AirshipScriptableObject classes
	public template: NPCTemplate;

	@Server()
	protected Start(): void {
		if (this.template === undefined) return;

		const character = Airship.Characters.SpawnNonPlayerCharacter(this.transform.position, {
			customCharacterTemplate: this.template.customPrefab,
		});

		character.SetMaxHealth(this.template.maxHealth);
		character.SeatHealth(this.template.maxHealth);
		character.SetDisplayName(this.template.name);
	}
}

You will see we now have a reference field for an NPC template

Then click on the None (NPC Template) button - and it will give you a prompt to select a scriptable object of that type, which we can then select -

The template is now provided

Then when you run the game - it spawns the NPC with the name and health!

The spawner in action

Example of using the same scriptable object with multiple spawners