How do you change UI text in the middle of a method?

Questions & Answers
1

When launching the game, I’m loading a lot of data from a database. To lighten the pain I want to show a load bar to show the progress, along with a text informing the user what’s being loaded. (in a funny format of course)

For example I have this code:

public void Start()
    {
        if(LoadingState == LoadingState.StartFromDesktop)
        {
            SetText("Get Countries", 10);
            WorldModel.Countries = DataGameObjects.GetCountries();

            SetText("Get Continents", 25);
            WorldModel.SubContinents = DataGameObjects.GetSubContinents();
            WorldModel.Continents = DataGameObjects.GetContinents();
            WorldModel.Areas = DataGameObjects.GetAreas();
            WorldModel.States = DataGameObjects.GetStates();
        }
    }

    private void SetText(string text, int progress)
    {
        _task.text = text;

        _percentage.text = progress + " %";
        _progressbar.value = (float)progress / 100;
    }

Obviously, this doesn’t do what I want. It just changes the text to ‘Get Continents’ at the end of the method, while freezing the loading screen because its busy.

I tried using Coroutines, but that threw an error because it wanted me to return a string of a method.
Neither could I work it out using async tasks.

Any suggestions?

Also, what would be the best way to calculate the progress of loading an .sqlite file and .xml files?

2

I don’t think it’s the cleanest solution, but I managed it by putting everything I had in the Start() in a coroutine:

public void Start()
    {
        StartCoroutine(Load());
    }

    private IEnumerator Load()
    {
        if (LoadingState == LoadingState.StartFromDesktop)
        {

            StartCoroutine(SetText("test", 10));
            WorldModel.Countries = DataGameObjects.GetCountries();

            yield return new WaitForEndOfFrame();

            StartCoroutine(SetText("haha", 25));
            WorldModel.SubContinents = DataGameObjects.GetSubContinents();
            WorldModel.Continents = DataGameObjects.GetContinents();
            WorldModel.Areas = DataGameObjects.GetAreas();
            WorldModel.States = DataGameObjects.GetStates();
        }
    }

    private IEnumerator SetText(string text, int progress)
    {
        _task.text = text;

        _percentage.text = progress + " %";
        _progressbar.value = (float)progress / 100;

        yield return null;
    }

Obviously it needs some cleaning up and adding features. But this does what I wanted.