Recursive reference within a list

Questions & Answers
1

Hello all,

I am designing a pantheon of gods in my current project. To do so I am keeping a list within my game manger singleton which keeps track of all the information on each god within that list; doing this though I’ve ran into a problem— I need that list (which holds a reference to each god as an element) to hold another list within that element to ‘rival gods’ which should reference other gods within that same list.

I’m not sure if this is a problem in design or if I need a certain structure which I haven’t used before. I’ll try to do a little rundown to better explain it…

GameManager Class->Holds reference to PantheonManager->holds List (God being a class in itself which holds another list to ‘rivalGods’ so List as of now)…

I’d rather not use strings (god names) for checking and what not as they’re slow, thought about giving each one an int ID for faster checking but would rather a straight reference to a element in the initial list, is this possible and if so what would be the ideal method for this?

Edit: Hey all, after reading a bit more into this I think I’ve narrowed down what I was looking for originally. [This thread][1] here seems to do the trick, so for future reference if anyone is trying to do something similar to this I would go for this method. Thanks again all!

This could probably be abstracted a bit more as well so the RefreshEnum isn’t tied directly to that specific class…

Code Below

public class MyClass :  MonoBehaviour
{
    public void RefreshEnum()
    {
        string enumName = "MyEnum";
        string[] enumEntries = new string[myList.Count] as string[];
        string filePathAndName = "Assets/Scripts/Enums/" + enumName + ".cs"; //The folder Scripts/Enums/ is expected to exist

        for(int i = 0; i < myList.Count; i++)
        {
            enumEntries _= myList*.myElementName;*_

}

using(StreamWriter streamWriter = new StreamWriter(filePathAndName))
{
streamWriter.WriteLine( "public enum " + enumName );
streamWriter.WriteLine( “{” );
for( int i = 0; i < enumEntries.Length; i++ )
{
string lastItem = (enumEntries.Length == 0) ? null : enumEntries[enumEntries.Length - 1];

if(enumEntries != lastItem)
{
streamWriter.WriteLine( " " + enumEntries + “,” );
}
else
{
streamWriter.WriteLine( " " + enumEntries*);*
}
}
streamWriter.WriteLine( “};” );
}
AssetDatabase.Refresh();
}
} //end class
//then a custom Editor Class, here below…
[CustomEditor(typeof(MyClass))]
public class MyCustomEditor : Editor
{
public override void OnInspectorGUI()
{
DrawDefaultInspector();
MyClass mC = (MyClass)target;
if(GUILayout.Button(“Refresh Enum”))
{
mC.RefreshEnum();
}
}
}
_*[1]: http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/1170350/editorscript-generate-enum-from-string.html*_

2

Without seeing your script, I can only assume how its setup… But here is a basic recursive list.

foreach(God myGod in PantheonManager.GodsList) //Will loop through ALL gods.
{
foreach (God rival in PantheonManager.GodsList) //Will loop through the same list again
{
if (rival != myGod) //add all gods except itself as a rival.
{
myGod.RivalsList.Add(rival);
}
}
}
3

@Owen-Reynolds @Cynikal

Thanks for the quick response guys! I think my main problem is that these Gods don’t exist anywhere other than this list, they’re very much just data-driven entities in the game which keep track of tributes, appeasement, etc… Here is a picture of my inspector using the script as of now…

81493-screen-shot-2016-11-03-at-43430-pm.png
81493-screen-shot-2016-11-03-at-43430-pm.png770×1480 115 KB

I’m trying to avoid the 7-level limit for recursion here as well, which has become an issue in my current design.

So to try and focus more simply on my issue → Each god must hold a reference to certain other gods, not all others, this would be ideal if it was a drop down selection or drag and drop type situation.

-Perhaps as you add to the initial ‘Gods’ list these elements get added as enumerated items in real-time which can be selected under the rivals and allied lists, I feel like maybe a custom editor script could do the trick?

Sorry for not being able to put this in better terms, I’m having trouble myself putting it in to words.