Saving and loading a reference to a scriptabelobject from a text file

[Kurt-Dekker]

I like and agree with everything Spiney says above except the UUID part… I am allergic to extra bits of crap lying around like that.

Instead, just use the name of the ScriptableObject, and discipline yourself to have unique names for all, either via putting all SO instances in a directory (which lets the OS enforce name uniqueness), or else have your own tooling to enforce uniqueness, or at least complain when you make two with the same name to give you an immediate chance to fix the duplication.

Also, it is way easier to see ShortSword3 in your savefile than something like cca0cfdc-112f-11ef-86c2-b8e85646c3c6

Then as you save, you will save a proxy string.

Loading/Saving ScriptableObjects by a proxy identifier such as name:

Use the JSON serilization for ScriptableObject with asset fields in Editor and Build

We trivially work around this as follows: we recognize that ScriptableObjects cannot be serialized. we put ALL ScriptableObjects of a given type in a single directory to enforce name uniqueness we make a Repository object to retrieve these ScriptableObjects by name we modify our serializable structures so they: ----> don't serialize the SO itself ----> they serialize the name of the SO ----> they load the SO as a reference and look it up You cannot use Unity's "lite" JSON implementat…