Opinions on Unity's List View Framework asset

Unity Engine
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The asset in question can be found here: Unity Asset Store - The Best Assets for Game Making

I’m looking to hear from anyone that has used this asset themselves, and whether or not you were able to build upon it to suit your needs.

I’ll preface this post by saying that the asset clearly states that it is intended for experienced developers, and that it is not a “finished drag and drop asset”, but rather an asset that can be used as a generic starting point for developers to expand upon to suit their own needs.

I’m not here to criticise the asset or to attempt to influence anyone’s opinion on it. I just want to know if anyone who frequents this subreddit has used it, and therefore has some feedback related to their experience.

I downloaded the asset 3 days ago and have spent approx 24 hours or so with it in that time. The code itself is largely uncommented, with the exception of some core classes that are commented via the bitbucket repo found here Unity-Technologies / List View Framework / wiki / Core Classes — Bitbucket . While this is great, in order to understand exactly what is happening, there is so much digging to be done, and a large amount of classes that are uncommented. This is made difficult for two reasons : the lack of comments in the vast majority of classes, and the sheer volume of classes (that in many cases inherit from other classes). Many of these are very similarly named too, which while I can understand makes practical sense, they have some trivial names that make it difficult to follow. I took one of the examples related to populating a list based on the contents of a JSON file (as this is most closely to what we intend to use the asset as a starting point for), however after manually mapping out the relationship between the core classes and the other classes need, I ended up with a diagram like this https://s18.postimg.io/72fh81chl/Hierarchy_Including_JSONClasses.png .

The questions I really want to pose to others that have used this are “Did using this asset save you time?, Did you have issues clearly following what has happening in the examples?, Ultimately, were you able to use this asset to suit your needs?”. I appreciate that all those who use the asset will likely have done so for different reasons, however due to the fact that I am finding this undocumented (except core classes at a high level) code un-intuitive to follow , and difficult to modify without causing multiple errors, I just want some feedback from others.

The asset is developed by Unity Labs, so I’m confident the decoupled approach taken is sound, however I am weary of the time spent thus far with what feels like little progress made.

All feedback welcome.

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this isn’t reddit :stuck_out_tongue:

just looking at the package folder structure there appears to be 7 examples with increasing levels of complexity… having not downloaded it to check yet, I would assume that understanding the principles behind the approach would be covered by just looking at “0. Simple” ?

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I may or may not have also posted to the Unity subreddit :slight_smile:

To answer your question though, yes I have. I’ve looked at the Simple example and some of the other “easier” examples, and while they are helpful in some ways, they aren’t helpful in others. For example, the Simple example uses a script that does not inherit from / rely on any other scripts. It’s very easy to understand. The Basic (Example 1) example is useful in seeing how a list is created and made scrollable, which is useful. Unfortunately just looking at each example in order and learning what it does isn’t as simple as it might seem. There is a lot of inheritance, no comments, un-intuitive names etc. It’s just not as simple of a process as you might first assume. I’ve gone through examples, and I have tried my best to understand exactly what is happening in each case, however as I mentioned, I’ve now spent 3 working days looking in to this, trying to understand whats happening. It’s just taking quite some time and was wondering if there are alternate solutions people have come across or if anyone else has any insight due to similar experiences with the asset.

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Hey there, just started using this framework. Sorry if I’m late and you probably already decided what you want to do (seeing as it’s been FAR more than 3 days since), but I thought I’d offer a tiny bit of feedback anyway.

I will start by saying, yes: lots of inheritance. But they DID say it was for advanced programmers. Basically, my use case is: I am trying to create a list that can cycle and loop around again infinitely (both ways), which I would think would be a common use case they would have a example for, but no. I’ve been with it a couple hours so far and am finding myself overriding a lot of the virtual methods in order to add my own functionality, so there’s that. At this very point in time I am writing some extensions (i.e. some completely new methods) that will help me with my goal.

So… Still not sure if having the basic framework saved time or if I lost it due to needing to comprehend everything first. But so far it’s only been 2-3 hours total work time for me (compare to the frightful sounding 24), and Im already well on my way. Will report back once my custom list works as intended.

BTW, This may be helpful if you haven’t already seen it: Unity Labs | Unity