koobas.hobune.stream
Referencing prefab in code without using editor or Resources.Load?
I seem to encounter this pattern often, and have not found a clean way to handle it:
I have a MonoBehaviour that instantiates a prefab (e.g. a MonoBehaviour called Fragile that spawns a prefab with a particle system when the object it's attached to is hit). My desire is to avoid referencing the prefab it must spawn in the editor, because then I must manually drag the exact same prefab to the component every single time I add it to an object.
At the moment I'm solving this problem by putting the prefab in a Resources folder, declaring a static GameObject member in my MonoBehaviour, and using Resources.Load in Awake if the member is null. To my knowledge this has the following downsides:
Once loaded, that prefab is never unloaded since the static reference will remain.
Resources.Loadisn't very fast and could result in stuttering if a number of components wake up that all need to load their static references.
Other methods I don't think would work well:
Loading all at startup - this won't scale well.
Loading as needed at level load time - the idea of having to track what prefabs are used in a level doesn't thrill me.
Any ideas? I'm relatively new to Unity and I feel there's a gap in my knowledge where the answer lies.
There's also Addressables package that's meant to replace Resources and can be used to load and unload assets at runtime
