Serialize ScriptableObject without creating an asset out of it?

Unity Engine
1

Is it possible to do something like this?

public class MyComponent : MonoBehaviour
{

    public MyScriptable myScriptable;

    public void OnValidate()
    {
        if (myScriptable == null)
        {
             myScriptable = ScriptableObject.CreateInstance<MyScriptable>();      
        }
    }

}

public class MyScriptable : ScriptableObject
{

    public int MyVar1;
    public string MyVar2;

}

I tried this but am getting a “Type Mismatch” error in Unity.

2

Well, yes and no, it is certainly possible, but I don’t see why you would want to do that and why you would want it to be a scriptable object in that case.

You can use XML or binary serialization with .NET libraries, or write your own serialization, but you still have to store the serialized data somewhere.

3

The reason is that my Scriptable Object inherits from a base class and can be used by itself but is also sometimes embedded inside MonoBehaviours. It would be quite lame that a Unity Object couldn’t be serialized normally.

4

Except that CreateInstance(); should be ScriptableObject.CreateInstance();, the code works as intended.

You’re probably doing something funky in the inheritance that’s breaking things.

5

Sorry, I free-typed the code above but have you tried it yourself?

Here’s the package that illustrates the problem:
https://expirebox.com/download/09cb7eb3e09281683db83cb544e1f8bc.html

It contains 2 assets: Asset.cs and Asset2.cs. Just create a new Asset from the menu and then watch what happens. There’s no inheritance or nothing.

6

I tried it myself by copy-pasting your post. It’s a big difference - your post had a MonoBehaviour as the object containing the scriptable, your package has a ScriptableObject as the container.

If you add a ScriptableObject field to a MonoBehaviour, Unity just creates the object as a part of the scene file and dumps it in there, and references it. So that works. But for sub-assets, you have to actually create the asset.

1 Like
7

So there’s no way to do it for ScriptableObjects like in the package I uploaded?

8

Pretty sure there’s not, though I could be wrong.

The usual way to do this is to add Asset2 as a sub asset.