Question Whats the correct design pattern to setup code that links to UI with game data?

For UI toolkit where a lot of the UI links to game data in real time and updates in real time, i find i'm writing a single class that links multiple things to the UI it becomes essentially a master class. It's not clear how to do this in a compositional way like you could with the original UI system and having monobehaviours on the UI elements.

What is the best design pattern for using UI toolkit linked to game data not just simple menus ? It's really not clear.

 

We use the MVVM pattern together with UniRx. The following gists give you an idea on how we implemented the basic structure:

• https://gist.github.com/scho/6ec3f30653119b3856b1a9edfd5b0b7b
• https://gist.github.com/scho/d737ec33aa3b5b1e7fc8e04990d866d2

 

Those script examples don't really explain the design pattern. If you need to use UniRx to go along with it, that kinda suggests there is no clean way to do it without some external library.

 

Some kind of binding is being implemented I believe. It works only for editor as of now.

 

Runtime data binding seems to have been added for Unity 2023.2: https://forum.unity.com/threads/introducing-the-runtime-bindings-api-in-unity-2023-2.1454221/

Otherwise there are external libraries out there, and I don't imagine it's too hard to roll your own. Just seems to involve some wrapper classes with callbacks, last I looked.

 

It uses the Model View ViewModel design pattern:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model–view–viewmodel

 

How does ViewModel looks in your example?

 

It wrapped your models and exposes properties of primitive types and/or IObservables:

Code (CSharp):

1.  
2. public class PerkViewModel
3. {
4.     private readonly IPerk _perk;
5.  
6.     public PerkViewModel(IPerk perk)
7.     {
8.         _perk = perk;
9.     }
10.  
11.     public string Name => _perk.Definition.Type.ToNameLocaKey().Localize();
12.  
13.     public IObservable<string> Description => _perk.OnChangedAsObservable()
14.         .Select<IPerk, string>(p => p.LocalizeEffect());
15. }
16.