Random Event System - Hand Code or Modular

Unity Engine
1

So I need to make a scripted event system that will have a large number of pretty diverse events that can happen. I’ve got a few ideas of how to do this and I keep going back and forth so I decided to crowd source for opinions.

One idea is to have an event class that has a bunch of generic modifier methods and a public array that will execute those methods in different orders on an object.

Simple Example:

public class MyObject {
	public string myString = "";
	public int myInt = 0;
	public float myFloat = 0.0f;
}

public class MyEvent : MonoBehaviour {
	public MyObject myObject;

	public string[] actions = new string[]{
		"ModifyString",
		"ModifyInt",
		"ModifyFloat"
	};

	void OnEnable () {
		foreach(string s in actions){
			Invoke(s, 0);
		}
	}

	void ModifyString () {
		myObject.myString = "New String";
	}

	void ModifyInt () {
		myObject.myInt = 37;
	}

	void ModifyFloat () {
		myObject.myFloat = 89.675f;
	}
}

This system would make things pretty generic I think and it definitely has its limitations. No return values (or at least not an easy way to say what return value I want at what point anyway).

another idea is to have a base event class and just extend all my possible events from that.

public class MyObject {
	public string myString = "";
	public int myInt = 0;
	public float myFloat = 0.0f;
}

public class MyEvent : MonoBehaviour {
	public MyObject myObject;

	void OnEnable () {
		Execute();
	}

	public virtual void Execute () {

	}
}

public class Event1 : MyEvent {
	public override void Execute () {
		myObject.myString = "New String";
		myObject.myInt = 37;
		myObject.myFloat = 89.675f;
	}
}

public class Event2 : MyEvent {
	public override void Execute () {
		myObject.myInt = 88;
		myObject.myFloat = 3.2f;
	}
}

public class Event3 : MyEvent {
	public override void Execute () {
		myObject.myString = "A Different String";
	}
}

This definitely seems the most versatile but it could get a little hard to manage all the possible scenarios. I’m also not sure what the cost of having a whole bunch of smaller classes would be vs one large, generic class that I can just invoke from.

These examples are simple but in reality I need these events to do a wide variety of things from showing some text in the GUI while waiting for an input to simply modifying a number somewhere.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Random Ideas?

2

Personally, I would do with the base class and a collection of derived one. At some point, you’ll end up wanting to have member variable or other thing related to your event and it’s going to break your action pattern.

Finally, build a list of all the available derived events by reflection, and no need to ever take care of that list ever again.

3

Cool, that’s the way I’m currently leaning. I’ve barely scratched the surface of using reflections but its been interesting so far and looks promising as a way to manage all those classes. Thanks LightStriker.