binding properties to UI Text/Image etc

Question

Managing GUI Elements

Can someone point me in the right direction as to 'binding' game object properties to UI as although what I have works, it has me stuck up to my nose in code where I would imagine there has to be a simpler recommended way using the inspector

I have a Group of GameObjects as shown below

     ▼ UICanvas //Canvas
      ▼ Active Character //Empty Game Object
       ▼ Panel // UI Panel
         CharacterName //UI Text
         CharacterImage //UI Image
         CharacterClassImage //UI Image
         CharacterWeaponName //UI Text

I have a UIManager monobehavior attached to my UI Canvas that I can store a reference to during the Start() of my game Manager

   _uiManager = GameObject.Find ("UICanvas").GetComponent<UIManager>();

similarly I have a way of getting a reference to the GameManager from the start method of my UIManager

   _gameManager= GameObject.Find ("GameManager").GetComponent<GameManager>();

and in my GameManager's update function I make a call to

 _uiManager.ActiveCharacterChanged();

Here is what my UIManager class looks like with 1 panel and zero interactivity which I can only imagine will get exponentially worse and unmanagable

public class UIManager : MonoBehaviour {

     private GameManager _gameManager;

 private Transform _activeCharacterPanel;
 private Text _activeCharacterName;
 private Image _activeCharacterImage;
 private Image _activeCharacterClassImage;
 private Text _activeCharacterWeaponName;

 // Use this for initialization
 void Start ()
 {
     _activeCharacterPanel = this.transform.FindChild("Active Character").FindChild("Active Character Panel");
     _activeCharacterName = _activeCharacterPanel.FindChild("CharacterName").GetComponent<Text>();
     _activeCharacterImage = _activeCharacterPanel.FindChild("CharacterImage").GetComponent<Image>();
     _activeCharacterClassImage = _activeCharacterPanel.FindChild("CharacterClassImage").GetComponent<Image>();
     _activeCharacterWeaponName = _activeCharacterPanel.FindChild("CharacterWeaponName").GetComponent<Text>();


     if (_activeCharacterPanel == null)
     {
         Debug.LogError ("Could Not find active char panel");
     }

     _gameManager = GameObject.Find("GameManager").GetComponent<GameManager>();
     if (_gameManager == null)
     {
         Debug.LogError ("GameManager is Null");
     }
 }

 public void ActiveCharacterChanged()
 {
     if (_gameManager.ActiveCharacter != null)
     {
         _activeCharacterName.text = _gameManager.ActiveCharacter.DisplayName;
 //_activeCharacterImage.texture = TODO;
 //_activeCharacterClassImage.texture = TODO;
         _activeCharacterWeaponName.text = _gameManager.ActiveCharacter.Weapon.Name;
     }
 }

}

Answer 1

I'm not marking this as an accepted answer as as far as i'm concerned it's still a ways off from being a robust solution much like Glurths, it works and it is what I will be using but im convinced there has to be a way to structure this in a way that manages its own UI value updating.

I have a way to do this with only very little code and little setup, the downside being you need to know when the value you want to display changes as you set it via dictionary in a singleton. Code below

Example of a call to the UIManager to update the text being displayed

 UIManager.Instance.UITextBindings["ActiveCharacterName"].text = _activeCharacter.DisplayName;

Here is the UIManager class (I think its called a singleton)

using UnityEngine; using UnityEngine.UI; using System.Collections.Generic;

 public class UIManager 
 {
     private static UIManager _instance;
     public static UIManager Instance
     {
         get
         {
             if (_instance == null)
             {
                 _instance = new UIManager();
             }
             return _instance;
         }
         set
         {
             _instance = value;
         }
     }
 
     public Dictionary<string, Text> UITextBindings = new Dictionary<string, Text>();
 }

Here is the behavior you attach to a gameobject with a text component on it. You give it a binding name which in the start function adds it to the dictionary and you can set the text initial value as well. It only takes strings of course so you need to do a little formatting or .ToString() calls for numbers you need to display

 using UnityEngine;
 using System.Collections;
 using UnityEngine.UI;
 using System;
 
 public class TextBindingBehavior : MonoBehaviour
 {
     public string BindingName;
     public string TextInitialValue;
 
     public Text TextComponent;
 
     public string TextValue
     {
         get
         {
             if (TextComponent == null)
             {
                 TextComponent = this.gameObject.GetComponent<Text>();
             }
             return TextComponent.text;
         }
         set
         {
             if (TextComponent == null)
             {
                 TextComponent = this.gameObject.GetComponent<Text>();
             }
             TextComponent.text = value;
         }
     }
 
     // Use this for initialization
     void Start ()
     {
         TextValue = TextInitialValue;
         UIManager.Instance.UITextBindings.Add(BindingName, TextComponent);
     }
 }

binding properties to UI Text/Image etc

1 Reply

Your answer

Follow this Question

Related Questions