Is there a tutorial/document/thread that explains how AuthoringComponents are intended to work?

Hi there,

I’m specifically looking at the IConvertGameObjectToEntity you get from the Create -> ECS -> Authoring Component Type template. How would one use this within a pure ECS build? What concrete examples of things would I use this for?

Would I (for example) create a prefab "small health potion" and attach an AuthoringComponent with a serializable field for ‘heal amount’. So I could create a series of items in the editor where game designers might be able to edit parameters without requiring code?

Sorry if that isn’t clear, i’m Maybe a little confused about the reasons this component template has been added and the optimal intended uses for it.

 

Exactly!

Not just prefabs, you can also use it for all custom data on all your scene GameObjects and then drop all those GameObjects into a subscene. Unity will convert the subscene to Entities and bake the result into a binary file so that on game load the game doesn't have to convert all those entities.

 

https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/EntityComponentSystemSamples/tree/master/ECSSamples/Assets/HelloCube/6. SpawnFromEntity

It's used in converting gameobjects to entity representation, because entities aren't editable in the editor in the same way gameobjects are. You still need to create a data only component that is equivalent to your health potion script.