Favorites Tab[s] - your favorite assets and game objects

No, I don't think this has been suggested before, but initially (before the first release) I was planning to have exactly the same feature. I worked on that for a while, but I had to remove it at the end because it wasn't ready for the release... This tool evolved since that time in another direction, so as you said filtering by name can be used to simulate something similar, but then yeah, it all depends on naming conventions... So I'll try to do the folders with the next update, besides those other new features I've promised earlier. May take some time tho, as I'm still trying to finish a huge major update for the Script Inspector 2. I hope that's ok?

 

Because we have the ability to star with different colors, it would be nice to be able to create multiple favorites tabs, each setup to filter on a different color.

 

Thanks for your suggestion Jimww! Sounds very useful so it will come in the next update with the other improvements. Si2 will be entering beta sometime next week hopefully, so I'll be working on the next version of Favorites Tabs again then...

 

Could the favorites item include the hierarchy path? it would make it easier to differentiate 2 objects with the same name. For example, "Health (Enemies.Enemy.Health)" and "Health (Player.Health)".

 

Hey Nezabyte, thanks for the suggestion! At first I was thinking to say no because showing the path on all items would make the list confusing and unreadable. But then I realized there's no need to show the path on every single item - showing it only on those with duplicated names will be actually enough! And I think it will be very helpful, so thanks for the great idea! It will be added with the next update too.

 

I'm currently unable to permanently add new favorites items, without first saving and exiting unity. Otherwise, as soon as I click play, any new favorites are gone. I'm using the recently updated unity 4.2.1f4 Pro on OSX.

Also, I find myself using this a lot (when it worked) and I think the ability to save preset groups of favorites could be useful. I'm almost tempted to make this feature myself. Seems easy enough..

 

I'm downloading the 4.2.1 for OSX right now. I'll check and I'll let you know... What kind of items are those, scene objects or assets?

 

Works fine here, for both, assets and scene objects...

So, I'll need to know first what kind of items were those, scene objects or assets. I'll keep trying, maybe I'll find something weird...

May I ask you too, is that happening with my original code or with some modifications?

 

Original code, no modifications. After restarting Unity, I pick any type of object and make it a favorite and it works, but then the second time I favorite an object, it does not remain after hitting play. The good news is that I can make it happen with an empty game object in a new project with only Favorites installed. I just added 3 game objects and made one of them a child and was able to reproduce the problem.

Unity 4.21f4 Pro on OSX

EDIT: I just sent you the project via your info@ email address.

EDIT2: Though I verified the bug in the project before I sent it to you, my real project is now working fine again. I can't explain it, but I'm happy. I went back into the bug project I sent you and it too works now.? I noticed a duplicate FG_GameObjectGUIDs had appeared where it had a missing script error for one of them. Not sure what happened.

 

Ok, I got your zip file, so I'll try something with it now... Thanks for your efforts!

 

Yep, it happened to me too after a few tries with that scene... :-\ investigating now...

 

I'm still trying to find out what exactly is going on. I think it only happens if you add a scene object to the favorites when Editor is in play mode, and that scene object hasn't been bookmarked before, in which case I'm adding a new entry in the GUID's table. After exiting play mode Unity resets the properties and removes the newly created entry, and then it isn't possible to bookmark that object anymore until the next restart...

I need a little bit more time to verify that and then I'll look for a solution... Great catch Jimww!

Edit:
Ah, I found it! Disregard what I said in this post, it's actually a completely different thing... I'll fix it in a minute...

 

I found the bug and it's easy to fix it. It's in the FavoritesTab.cs script, the "if" condition at line 309 needs to be merged with an "" with the next "if" condition like this:



Just save the file and that should be it!

This bug was introduced with my performance fix in v1.2.2, one thing got fixed, another one broken Apologies!

Now it would be great if you guys would confirm this fixes the bug AND it doesn't introduce any new ones? Thanks in advance!

 

So far the fix works fine for me. The stars flash off and on when I press Play, but I can deal with that micro distraction

 

Cool! I'll check if it's possible to avoid the flashing too before I submit the fix to Asset Store...

 

Ah, I think I found what was causing that blinking. It's not related to this fix at all... The fix seems to be fine, so I'll be submitting both fixes to the Asset Store very soon, after checking these once again

 

Definitely could use coloured stars now, trying to organise my project better!
You can send me a beta if you need a tester, thanks

 

The last two fixes, one of which is a very important one, are now available on Asset Store! Please update your Favorites Tabs to version 1.2.5 from there.

All the credits for this version go to Jimww for discovering and reporting the issues. Thanks Jimww!

While you are there, don't miss the opportunity to rate it (or maybe even write a short review? ) and let others know if Favorites Tabs was worth purchasing or not, and more importantly let me know was my time making this worth or not ... Thanks to everyone who already did that!!! Your 7 five-stars reviews (with the last one from justinl, which I missed somehow - thanks alot!) helped Favorites Tabs to become fifth best rated asset in the Utilities category...

Enjoy the update!

Awesome, thanks for the offer, it may help a lot! I'll PM you when I get that ready

 

ah the coloured stars are already on the asset store

I think it would be nice to be able to sort the favourites tab by colour too,
now it's possible to view by name and by type, just if you can add view by colour here, thanks!

 

Yep, colored stars have been there for a while... I thought you were asking for 'filtering by color' option. It will come in version 1.3, also with 'sort by color' and all other improvements... Offer for beta testing still valid?

 

Yes the offer stands, just pm me and I will test it out

 

Oh look, Favorites Tabs got featured on the Asset Store's front page!!! Just next to playMaker and NGUI! Those Asset Store folks are so cool

 

Does this require us to commit any changes into our project repo? Or is this feature clientside?

 

Hey CyberMew, please excuse me, I wasn't able to reply earlier today...

It's a mix of both, actually. Let me explain that... Favorited assets do not require committing any changes since the list of favorites is not stored in the Unity project. Every asset in Unity has a unique id which is persistent and already stored in the project. This allows me to identify the favorited assets without any modifications to the project or the assets itself. The list of those id's is stored locally on the machine, and that's why your favorites will not mix with the favorites of your workmates.

Now, favoriting a scene object is a bit more complicated because scene objects in Unity do not get any unique id assigned, unfortunately. So, in order to achieve the same functionality as with the project's assets I had to implement my own system for assigning unique id's to scene objects too, not to all of them, of course, but only to those that you'll add to your favorites. Whenever you bookmark a scene object which has never been bookmarked before by you or your workmates, a new id is generated and associated with that object. That id and the reference to that objects are then added to the list of all such pairs, which has to be stored somewhere in the scene, because in Unity only scene objects can persistently reference other scene objects. Adding those pairs modifies the scene, obviously, and if you'd like to make your newly favorited scene object appear again in your list of favorites the next time you open that scene you'd have to save and commit the modified scene. Or if you don't like those scene objects to remain favorited the next time you work with the same scene (and you haven't done any modifications to it) just simply don't save the changes.

All those id/reference pairs are stored in a single root scene object called FG_GameObjectGUIDs, so you can easily delete it if you ever decide to stop using the Favorites Tabs in that project, or if you'd like to unfavorite all objects in that scene (although that will do the same to all of your workmates).

I hope that was easy to follow and clear things up? Let me know if there's anything else you'd like to know about the Favorites Tabs. I also hope you enjoy using it!

 

One of the users has noticed that performance fix added in v1.2.2 is not working in the latest version, so I've submitted yesterday a tiny update for Favorites Tabs in Asset Store. Version 1.2.6 is waiting for approval and in meantime if anyone needs the fix earlier here's what you'll have to do:

In the latest version of FavoritesTab.cs, please modify line 313:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.             if (goGUIDs != null  !create  !FG_GameObjectGUIDs._dirty)
3.  

to this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.             if (!create  !FG_GameObjectGUIDs._dirty)
3.  

This works much better now and both bug fixes from 1.2.2 and 1.2.5 are working fine! Apologies if this caused any trouble to some of you (there were no complains so I hope it didn't)...

 

Hmm, it's the third working day since I submitted the update and still pending for the review. If you are reading this please do this small change yourself for now and update later. Thanks!

 

Favorites Tabs 1.2.6 got released yesterday on Asset Store! Please update your projects since this version contains that very important performance fix I was talking about.

Feedback and suggestions are very welcome...

Enjoy!

 

I bought installed favorite tabs yesterday and it started working immediately. After an hour or so I started a new scene. Upon editing code in one of my other scripts pressing the build button, your FavoritesTabs.cs started to have errors and won't compile.

The 3 errors are on lines 314, 323, 835.
It says "Default parameter specifiers are not permitted."

I have not touched any of the favorites tabs files.

Thanks for your time help.

Edit: I am using the latest version of Unity (4.2.2f1) the newest Favorites Tabs.

 

Hi onij, and thanks for purchasing the Favorites Tabs!

That "error" is reported by C# compilers configured to compile C# 3.0 code. I know Visual Studio does that, and I'm not sure about MD or the others. The actual C# implementation in Unity is a blend of C# 3.0 and a little bit of C# 4.0. Most of the features of the 3.0 are supported in Unity, but not all of them, and only a few features of C# 4.0 are added on top of that. The default parameter specifiers is one of those features, and since that's not part of the 3.0 specification any "regular" C# compiler will report this as an error. Now this is not something to worry about because you are not supposed to build the code manually like that. Instead you can just save the changes and Unity will do that that using its own compiler, whenever it detects changes in a script.

Let me know if this clears that up or if I can help with anything else

 

Everything is good now! Thank you for replying so quickly and effectively to both my forum post and my personal message to you. You have a great program company. I will be leaving positive feedback for you in the store.

 

Thank you very much for your great review, and good luck with your Unity adventure! You've chosen a great platform that's easy to fall in love with, and if you are not careful you'll end up spending all of your free time with it, like me ;p

 

Hi, I have been using Favorites Tab for long and I love it. But everything works good until now I upgraded my Unity to version 4.3. The tab disappeared! Could you fix this? Thank you very much!

 

A similar problem was reported with other extensions and just today with my Si2 too. Seems like Unity 4.3 can't load the layout of the tabs in the Editor if it was saved with an older version. I'm investigating this...

The solution is easy, just restore the Editor layout to factory settings and then click Window-> Favorites Tab. This helped in case of Si2 but I can't verify it helps here too, so please let me know if it does

 

Oh yeah, it works! Thank you!

 

Ok, great! Thanks for reporting this, hopefully will help other people too...

And thanks for your compliments too!!!

 

Hello,
I'm a very happy user of Favorites Tab, but after I updated to 4.3 I can't select anymore a favorite folder. Or better, I can select a folder, but it doesn't show me its content in the Project tab, but the folder itself.
Sorry if some else already posted the same question.
Thanks,
Maurizio

 

Oh, I see... I tested it with Unity 4.3 and everything seemed to be just fine to me. Thanks for reporting the issue, somehow I missed that. I'm checking the issue now...

 

Hi Maurizio!

Favorites Tabs version 1.2.7 is available now on Asset Store!

It contains the fix for the issue with Unity 4.3!

Thanks again for reporting this!
Enjoy!!!

 

Hey that's amazing. Unbelievable so fast!
Thank you! It works perfectly

 

Hehe, it was an easy fix. It took only 3 minutes to find out what is the reason (using Si2), about 5 minutes to run ILSpy and see what got changed in 4.3, and almost no time to apply the fix (again using Si2)! I wish I have recorded all that ... Testing it across different Unity versions took much longer only because it takes time to run and close Unity, but it would be twice longer if had to also run MonoDevelop to reapply the fix with that instead of Si2! Si2 vs. MD: 1:0

The other thing is that the awesome Asset Store folks put me on the bypass list so my updates get released instantly!

 

hi all. I need your help.. i have Quick Disable asset ( https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/12775 ) and in the Hierarchy yellow star superimposed on element of this asset. Can you tell me where I need to fix the code to shift the position of the stars

image - http://tinypic.com/r/2d948y1/5

 

Hi arkdzo! Try adding this line:

Code (csharp):

1. rc.xMax -= 20f;

just below line 1390, which is:

Code (csharp):

1. Rect rc = new Rect(selectionRect);

so that you'd end up with this:

Code (csharp):

1.  
2.                     Rect rc = new Rect(selectionRect);
3.                     rc.xMax -= 20f;
4.  

Then tweak that 20f value to adjust the position horizontally... Please let me know is that what you wanted to do.

Thanks for your purchase and for reporting the issue! Unfortunately Unity's API isn't enough to allow these kind of extensions to easily cooperate, but I'll try to do something from my side to avoid the issue.

Enjoy!

 

it works =) Thanks

 

Hello my friends! A new version of your favorite editor extension, the Favorites Tabs got just released on Asset Store!

This version is compatible with the awesome Hierarchy2 extension developed by VietLabs, so you can now use these two extensions in your projects at the same time. Btw, if you haven't heard of Hierarchy2 yet, I think this is something worth of your attention! Trust me it looks great, and it's packed with many time saving features, not to mention that author is adding even more features to it... Go check it out here: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/#/content/14032

Enjoy!

 

Thanks a lot Flipbookee for your kind words !

 

Oh, how did I miss this! Yet another 5 stars review? Thank you Graham Bailey!!! Very much appreciated!

That's now 9 reviews and all of them 5 stars! You guys are the best!!!

 

Is there a button to clear out all favorites from the list? If not, would be cool

 

Yeah, just select all (Ctrl/Cmd A or Edit-> Select all) in a Faviorites tab without a fulter and then right-click one of the selected items and select Remove From List from the context menu. Or something like that, I can't check right now... That same way you can unfav all scenes for example if you had the filtering on for scenes only, etc.

 

Cool, thanks, On another note, I noticed that the unfilled star icon doesn't appear unless I'm hovered over a game object, which doesn't work well with Hierarchy 2 because many times I accidentally click on the lock icon instead of clicking on the eyeball icon to enable/disable objects as it pushes the icons to the left.



Maybe this could be a settings option, but could we have it so that the unfilled star only appears if I hit a keyboard button while I have the game object selected? instead of automatically appearing? The filled star could appear as normal since it stays on the screen anyway. Alternative option is to always show the unfilled star.

 

Yes, I see... I fixed this with the latest update but then Thien had to put his code into a namespace which broke my fix. And he posted a solution in his thread, so I'll just update Favorites Tabs with that fix now. It will make Hierarchy 2 icons always stay at a fixed position... Give me a few minutes...