How to make custom 2 dimensional enum array class

Questions & Answers
1

I wanted to know how I can make my own custom 2 dimensional enum array class. I found a similar article online and here’s what I’ve come up with:

public enum myEnum { value1, value2, value3, value4, value5 };

[System.Serializable]
public class myClass {

	public int columns = 9;
	public int rows = 9;
	public myEnum[] myArray = new myEnum [ columns * rows ];

	public myEnum this [ int x, int y ] {
		get {
			return myArray [y * columns + x];
		} set { 
			myArray  [y * columns + x] = value;
		}
	}
}

Now I can call my array like this:

myClass myNewClass = new myClass ();
myNewClass [2,5] = myEnum.value3 // Set value

Instead of using myNewClass [2,5] I wanted to use myNewClass.myArray [2,5]. How do I go about doing that? I don’t want to use Unity’s original multidimensional method since it doesn’t serialize in the inspector.

2

That’s not possible unless your “myArray” is actually a custom class / struct which provides an indexer. Indexer can only be defined in classes / structs.

You can create a class like this:

[System.Serializable]
public class Serializable2DimArray<T>
{
    private int m_Columns = 1;
    [SerializeField]
    private T[] m_Data;
    public T this [ int aCol, int aRow ]
    {
        get { return m_Data[aRow * m_Columns + aCol]; }
        set { m_Data[aRow * m_Columns + aCol] = value; }
    }
    public int Columns {get { return m_Columns; }}
    public int Rows { get { return m_Data.Length / m_Columns; }}
    public Serializable2DimArray(int aCols, int aRows)
    {
        m_Columns = aCols;
        m_Data = new T[aCols * aRows];
    }
}

With this struct you can simply declare a serializable 2-dimensional array for any type. Something like this:

[System.Serializable]
public class MyEnum2DimArray : Serializable2DimArray<myEnum> { }

This “type” can be used in any other serializable class just like a normal 2 dim array. The only exception is that you would create an array with “method brackets” instead of index brackets:

public MyEnum2DimArray myArray = new MyEnum2DimArray(2, 3);

Of course when you want to edit this array in the inspector you most likely need a propertydrawer for this class. The array length always has to be a multiple of the column count. Though it’s not clear for what purpose you actually need this 2dim array. It’s difficult to actually display a 2dim array if you have a large column count