Still trying to wrap my head around memory usage, asset bundles, and prefabs

Unity Engine
1

Hi Gang,

Let’s say I have this current setup:

  1. a few dozen prefabs in one asset bundle (built with CollectDependencies|CompleteAssets)
  2. a game-level content API layer that I have to use to get the AB data in as a byte[ ] array
  3. Before I load my actual gameplay level I call AssetBundle.CreateFromMemoryImmediate() on this byte[ ] array and cache the resulting asset bundle by name.
  4. I then call bundle.Load(…) to obtain the prefabs I want and also cache them by name (inside my AssetManager layer)
  5. As I’m loading the level, I’m calling GameObject.Instantiate() on the cached prefabs that I obtained in step 4)
  6. When I finish loading the level
2

ARG clumsy sausage fingers!

  1. When I finish loading the level, I release references to my cached stuff:
    a) I call bundle.Unload() on the cached AssetBundle instances I obtained in step 3)
    b) I remove references to my prefabs cached in step 4) by removing the appropriate dictionary entry

I do all this to try to make my gameplay level as lean as possible. However doing Step 6 seems to unload everything from my game, even those game objects that I duplicated from the cached prefabs in Step 5.

Does anyone know why freeing up my prefabs (which I only need at the beginning of the level and which I’m duplicating) results in the duplicates being removed?

3

Bump. I’m also making sure I’m calling AssetBundle.Unload() with the unloadAllLoadedObjects parameter set to false, which (according to the docs) shouldn’t touch the objects I created from the bundle.