Adding custom parameter types
Hi all,
I decided to take the plunge and purchase AC and it's been a really good experience. I also decided to convert as many systems as possible to AC's systems.
I'm starting to add ActionList files that serve as generic actions to be used when starting dialogues. I'm still using my own dialogue code as it's fully integrated with Articy. So one such generic action is my own "StartDialogue" action.
The intent was to add an ArticyRef into the parameter system as I use Articy data to drive variables, dialogue and quest state. Unfortunately I'm struggling to figure out how to drawn this parameter nicely, partly because I only use UnityEditor GUI fields when necessary and because I lack experience with AC.
Articy provides it's own editor for these fields so my initial plan was to use a PropertyField to allow the inspector to draw the property using Articy's editor which provides a nice type constrained object picker. This works fine when defining an action because I can create a SerializedObject from an Action but I can't do this in an ActionParameter.
Does anyone have any advice on how to achieve this? It's always annoyed me that Unity doesn't provide an easy way of drawing a single property as it would be in a default inspector scenario 
.
EDIT: A working but rather hacky work around was to create a wrapped ScriptableObject containing an ArticyRef then creating an SerializedObject from that and using a PropertyField.
Cheers,
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Glad to have you here, @Timz.
If you haven't seen it, AC has an integration package for Articy over on the Downloads page.
You may prefer to use your own integration, as it sounds more suited to your specific needs, but the integration solves the same issue in a similar way, only using a component instead of a ScriptableObject. The ArticyFlowRunner component references the ArticyRef, which itself can then be referenced as a GameObject parameter within the Object: Call event / Object: Send message Actions.
Thanks Chris. I had previously looked at the Articy integration but decided against it because I have quite a bit of other code handling the various Articy flows specific to my game. Maybe I could combine the code but having them as two systems might work nicely since there's a nice separation of concerns.
The component reference is an interesting usage, I think Articy does provide a script to hold references as well. I'll give this a test and see what I get. I'd like to keep it as light weight as possible so I can convert the dialogue triggers already in my game to ACs action lists.
Thanks for the pointers
!