How should I handle a array of GameObjects that might or might not be prefabs?

Hope someone can help. I'm mostly new to scripting in Unity (not C# though)

My end goal is take a list of GameObjects that I have added to a serialized array field and have them added as children of the GameObject that the script is attached to. I want it to be smart enough to handle Prefabs and regular GameObjects.

Right now regular GameObjects do work, but Prefabs don't. Which clearly is because I need to create a instance of the Prefab.

What I don't know is, can I either detect if a GameObject is a Prefab (Googling seems contradictory on if this is possible.) and create a instance, or attempt to make a instance from a GameObject regardless if it is a Prefab or not?

Or is there something else I should do?

 

https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/GameObject-scene.html

You can check if a game object is part of any scenes. If it is, it's a game object instance, if it isn't, it's a "prefab" (it's just a game object without instance, there are no prefabs in runtime).

 

It seems like bad seperation to mix gameobjects with prefabs.

 

Well I was mixing because my serialized object is of the Game Object type. I wanted to be able to handle both since I can assign either. If I could just limit what was assigned to just prefabs I would. But I don't know how.

 

Think of it this way: suppose you have a pair of Z42's in the scene and the player selects Z-42 and J14/a for their robot. How do you know which Z42 to grab? Or how can they tell the game "even though I have some Z42's I want a new one spawned, just like the J14/a has to be"? What is the point of having parts laying around, waiting to say "no need to spawn one -- use me"?

It makes more sense to have one action to grab an existing part from some other robot, and a different action to create a set of new parts.

 

Or in a pool. use my pool as an example.

Code (CSharp):

1.    public abstract class PollingPool<T> where T : Component
2.     {
3.         private readonly T prefab;
4.  
5.         private readonly Queue<T> pool = new Queue<T>();
6.         private readonly LinkedList<T> inuse = new LinkedList<T>();
7.         private readonly Queue<LinkedListNode<T>> nodePool = new Queue<LinkedListNode<T>>();
8.  
9.         private int lastCheckFrame = -1;
10.  
11.         protected PollingPool(T prefab)
12.         {
13.             this.prefab = prefab;
14.         }
15.  
16.         private void CheckInUse()
17.         {
18.             var node = inuse.First;
19.             while (node != null)
20.             {
21.                 var current = node;
22.                 node = node.Next;
23.  
24.                 if (!IsActive(current.Value))
25.                 {
26.                     current.Value.gameObject.SetActive(false);
27.                     pool.Enqueue(current.Value);
28.                     inuse.Remove(current);
29.                     nodePool.Enqueue(current);
30.                 }
31.             }
32.         }
33.  
34.         protected T Get()
35.         {
36.             T item;
37.  
38.             if (lastCheckFrame != Time.frameCount)
39.             {
40.                 lastCheckFrame = Time.frameCount;
41.                 CheckInUse();
42.             }
43.  
44.             if (pool.Count == 0)
45.                 item = GameObject.Instantiate(prefab);
46.             else
47.                 item = pool.Dequeue();
48.  
49.             if (nodePool.Count == 0)
50.                 inuse.AddLast(item);
51.             else
52.             {
53.                 var node = nodePool.Dequeue();
54.                 node.Value = item;
55.                 inuse.AddLast(node);
56.             }
57.          
58.             item.gameObject.SetActive(true);
59.  
60.             return item;
61.         }
62.  
63.         protected abstract bool IsActive(T component);
64.     }

It takes the prefab as argument to constructor. But internally it handels a collection of instances of that prefab