I have a object, that contains something of type system.object.
public class Foo : MonoBehaviour
{
[SerializeField]
object Val;
}
Val can contain primitives such as a float, a Vector3 or a Color.
Is there any way to get this to serialize properly?
Not without some extra fields which can actually store a supported serialized type. Unity serializes data based on the variable type. Since System.Object isn’t a supported type it won’t get serialized at all.
The best bet here would be to use the new ISerializationCallbackReceiver paired with a serialized string variable which holds the serialized data. How you serialize and deserialize your “object” is up to you as long as you can convert it into a string and be able to recreate the original value from that string you should be fine.
Here’s an (untested) example to support int, float, Color and Vector3 values:
public class Foo : MonoBehaviour, ISerializationCallbackReceiver
{
// our value of interest
private object val;
[SerializeField, HideInInspector]
private string valSerialized;
public void OnBeforeSerialize()
{
if (val == null)
{
valSerialized = "n";
return;
}
var type = val.GetType();
if (type == typeof(int))
valSerialized = "i"+val.ToString();
else if (type == typeof(float))
valSerialized = "f"+val.ToString();
else if (type == typeof(Color))
{
Color32 c = (Color)val;
uint v = (uint)c.r + (uint)c.g<<8 + (uint)c.b<<16 + (uint)c.a<<24;
valSerialized = "c" + v;
}
else if (type == typeof(Vector3))
{
Vector3 v = (Vector3)val;
valSerialized = "v" + v.x + "|" +v.y + "|" + v.z;
}
}
public void OnAfterDeserialize()
{
if (valSerialized.Length == 0)
return;
char type = valSerialized[0];
if (type == 'n')
val = null;
else if (type == 'i')
val = int.Parse(valSerialized.SubString(1));
else if (type == 'f')
val = float.Parse(valSerialized.SubString(1));
else if (type == 'c')
{
uint v = int.Parse(valSerialized.SubString(1));
Color c = new Color32(v & 0xFF, (v>>8) & 0xFF, (v>>16) & 0xFF,(v>>24) & 0xFF);
val = c;
}
else if (type == 'v')
{
string[] v = valSerialized.SubString(1).Split('|');
val = new Vector3(float.Parse(v[0]), float.Parse(v[1]), float.Parse(v[2]));
}
}
}
Note: The deserialization has no checks if the string is in the required format. To actually use this you might want to implement some checks or at least enclose it in a try-catch block.
@Bunny83 :
Nice job! There were some small syntactical errors I removed, and I also added bool and Vector2. Moreover, I tested your solution and it works for all datatypes. Please find the updated and tested code below:
[System.Serializable]
public class ObjectSerializable : ISerializationCallbackReceiver
{
public ObjectSerializable(object _val)
{
val = _val;
}
// our value of interest
private object val;
[SerializeField, HideInInspector]
private string valSerialized;
public object GetValue()
{
return val;
}
public void OnBeforeSerialize()
{
if (val == null)
{
valSerialized = "n";
return;
}
var type = val.GetType();
if (type == typeof(int))
valSerialized = "i" + val.ToString();
else if (type == typeof(float))
valSerialized = "f" + val.ToString();
else if (type == typeof(Color))
{
Color32 c = (Color)val;
uint v = (uint)c.r + ((uint)c.g << 8) + ((uint)c.b << 16) + ((uint)c.a << 24);
valSerialized = "c" + v;
}
else if (type == typeof(Vector2))
{
Vector2 v = (Vector2)val;
valSerialized = "w" + v.x + "|" + v.y;
}
else if (type == typeof(Vector3))
{
Vector3 v = (Vector3)val;
valSerialized = "v" + v.x + "|" + v.y + "|" + v.z;
}
else if(type == typeof(bool))
{
bool v = (bool)val;
valSerialized = "b" + v;
}
}
public void OnAfterDeserialize()
{
if (valSerialized.Length == 0)
return;
char type = valSerialized[0];
if (type == 'n')
val = null;
else if (type == 'i')
val = int.Parse(valSerialized.Substring(1));
else if (type == 'f')
val = float.Parse(valSerialized.Substring(1));
else if (type == 'c')
{
uint v = uint.Parse(valSerialized.Substring(1)); //
Color c = new Color32((byte) (v & 0xFF), (byte) ((v >> 8) & 0xFF), (byte) ((v >> 16) & 0xFF), (byte) ((v >> 24) & 0xFF));
val = c;
}
else if (type == 'w')
{
string[] v = valSerialized.Substring(1).Split('|');
val = new Vector2(float.Parse(v[0]), float.Parse(v[1]));
}
else if (type == 'v')
{
string[] v = valSerialized.Substring(1).Split('|');
val = new Vector3(float.Parse(v[0]), float.Parse(v[1]), float.Parse(v[2]));
}
else if(type == 'b')
{
val = bool.Parse(valSerialized.Substring(1));
}
}
}