↓Skip to main content
  1. Posts/

Day 12 - More Sweeping Up

OldDays ste-reez-muvi Unity csharp
Table of Contents

Trim away a little bit of technical debt, or at least make things look a little better.

What are those NPCs doing there?
#

What are those guys doing there?
What are those guys doing there?

When we change the top Z layer, we’re only enabling/disabling map cells, nothing else. Hence the NPCs (and portals) floating in space.

All we need is a little structural reorg for the portals, and this:

Managers/MapManager.cs
GitLab
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260

public void UpdateZ(float z) {
  Renderer currRend;
  foreach (Vector3 v in cell_transforms.Keys) {
    currRend = cell_transforms[v].GetComponent<Renderer>();
    currRend.enabled = (v.z <= z);
  }
  foreach (Vector3 v in cellsContainingNpcs.Keys) {
    foreach (int npcId in cellsContainingNpcs[v]) {
      currRend = npcTransforms[npcId].GetComponent<Renderer>();
      currRend.enabled = (v.z <= z);
    }
  }
  foreach (Vector3 v in portalTransforms.Keys) {
    currRend = portalTransforms[v].GetComponent<Renderer>();
    currRend.enabled = (v.z <= z);
  }
  zTop = z;
}

Out of mind, out of sight.
Out of mind, out of sight.

Done.

Get rid of the big list - Act One
#

Yucky set of lists in the Unity Inspector.
Yucky set of lists in the Unity Inspector.

This started as a quick hack so I could mess with the cell materials directly in the Unity editor, and quickly entrenched itself. Time to pull it out by the roots.

We should translate the display string directly into a material name, but a lot of those strings have special characters that don’t play nice with the file system. So we’ll fall back on ASCII codes:

Managers/MapManager.cs
GitLab
318
319
320
321

String StringToAsciiHex(String s) {
  byte[] ASCIIValues = Encoding.Convert(Encoding.Unicode, Encoding.ASCII, (Encoding.Unicode).GetBytes(s));
  return BitConverter.ToString(ASCIIValues);
}

…and then we can replace the weird parallel array lookup with:

Managers/MapManager.cs
GitLab
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111

if (!cellMaterials.ContainsKey(cells[v].DisplayGraphic)) {
  String materialName = StringToAsciiHex(cells[v].DisplayGraphic);
  Material cellMaterial = Resources.Load("Materials/Cells/" + materialName, typeof(Material)) as Material;
  if (cellMaterial == null) {
    print("Couldn't find material " + materialName + " for display graphic \"" + cells[v].DisplayGraphic + "\"!");
    Debug.Break();
  } else {
    cellMaterials[cells[v].DisplayGraphic] = cellMaterial;
  }
}
rend.material = cellMaterials[cells[v].DisplayGraphic];
rend.enabled = true;

We maintain a dictionary of cell materials so we don’t have to call Resources.Load for every cell. Now all we need is the materials:

Only a little less readable than my previous naming convention.
Only a little less readable than my previous naming convention.

So now we can have:

…with no actual change in functionality, and it seems a bit faster, too!

Next time
#

We’ll tackle this thing that keeps getting worse:

Managers/MapManager.cs
GitLab
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186

  UpdateCellContents();
  cellsContainingNpcs.Clear();
  UpdateNpcs("Phong");
  UpdateNpcs("Rocky.T.Orc");
  UpdateNpcs("Ydnac");
  UpdateNpcs("boar");
  UpdateNpcs("bear");
  UpdateNpcs("crocodile");
  UpdateNpcs("orc");
  UpdateNpcs("wolf");
  UpdateNpcs("centaur");
  UpdateNpcs("griffin");
  UpdateNpcCohab();

Day 12 code - client