Is one Serializable object for two references/variables possible?

Questions & Answers
1

I am currently building a waypoint system with a editor. I have a object WayPoint, and a object Path. Both objects are Serializable.

All waypoints are stored in a array in the object Path. Also each Waypoint object has a array with other waypoints (links). So the game knows where the waypoint is connected to.

So one waypoint object, can have 2 or more references. This is working until I start the project. Then for each references, a new copy of the old waypoint is created. So now I have 2 waypoints instead of one.

Is there a way to make sure that there will be only one waypoint object for 2 or more references/variables?

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System;

namespace AI {
    [System.Serializable]
    public class Paths : MonoBehaviour {
        public Waypoint[] wayPoints = new Waypoint[0];
    }
}

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System;

namespace AI {
    [System.Serializable]
    public class Waypoint {
        public Vector3 position;

        public Waypoint[] links = new Waypoint[0];

        public Waypoint(Vector3 position) {
            this.position = position;
        }
    }
}

All the values (array and position) are set by the editor. There can be multiple waypoints but only one path object.

2

Can you share any code? From the sounds of it, you could easily run into serialization depth limit problems. The preferable way to handle this would be for the WayPoint object to not serialize references to other Waypoints, but to serialize only indices of the connected Waypoints in the Path. You’d then add something to Path like GetConnectedWaypoints (int waypointIndex, List<Waypoint> connectedPoints)