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Extending Unity with Editor Scripting

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Editor Scripting

Unity is a powerful engine that enables creative people like you to build video games in different platforms.

After developing a few projects on it, you will realize that each of these could have been a better experience if you'd had a tool at that time to help you in the creation of content for your video game or in the automation of all those manual repetitive tasks that always end up generating a problem at the worst moment just because of Murphy's Law.

To create tools based on your video game requirements, Unity provides an editor scripting API to do it in a quick and fully integrated way. However, the documentation available for building such tools by yourself is not the best.

The main aim of this book is to give you a tour of some of the most important topics about editor scripting . We are going to explore its API when at the same time we implement custom tools to improve the development workflow in Run & Jump, a 2D platformer video game.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

Basics of editor scripting
Run & Jump presentation and definition of the scope of the custom tools

Overview

Probably, at this point, you are familiar with the basic concepts of Unity and we can safely assume that you know how to create a small video game from scratch without too many complications. You know, for projects of this size, almost everything is always under control and nothing takes too much time to be done. Basically, it is like a little paradise in the video game developer's land.

However, when the project starts increasing in size in terms of complexity, you will notice that certain tasks are repetitive or subject to error, generating a considerable amount of effort and waste of time. For example, the mechanics of your video game are quite unique and it is hard for the level designers to create content on time and without errors. This is because Unity, or the available third-party tool you use, doesn't satisfy all the required functionalities.

Sometimes, because you have more people working on the project, the lack of a mechanism to encourage people to follow standards makes your video game crash constantly.

In the same scenario, imagine that your project also requires a lot of art assets, so artists constantly add these to Unity. The problem appears later when one of the developers needs to constantly check whether the settings of these assets are configured properly to make these look right in the final build, consuming development time.

Finally, your project will be available on several platforms. However, owing to the specific characteristics of your video game, every time you make a production build, you must check whether all the settings are okay. You also need to check whether you removed all the cheat menus used by your testers and that the correct assets are loaded into each because you are preparing a trial version. Managing this becomes a huge task!

To solve all these issues, Unity provides an editor scripting API. Using this we can do the following tasks:

Modify how the Unity editor behaves, triggering our code with specific events
Improve the workflow assistance with a custom GUI that seamlessly integrates with the Unity editor GUI
Automate repetitive tasks by accessing the Unity editor's main functionalities

Understating how to use the editor scripting API to create editor scripts in your project will allow you to make Unity work for your video game and boost the productivity of the video game development.

Editor scripting basics

It's time to go hands on in the creation of editor scripts so in this section we are going to explore how to start them off.

What is an editor script?

An editor script is any piece of code that uses methods from the UnityEditor namespace, and its principal objective is to create or modify functionalities in the Unity editor.

To see this working, let's start with a basic example. Create a new project in Unity and then a new script called HelloWorld.cs. Don't worry about where to place the script, we'll talk about that in a bit. Copy the following code:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

public class HelloWorld {
    
    [MenuItem ("GameObject/Create HelloWorld")]
    private static void CreateHelloWorldGameObject () {
        if(EditorUtility.DisplayDialog(
            "Hello World", 
            "Do you really want to do this?", 
            "Create", 
            "Cancel")) {
            new GameObject("HelloWorld");
        }
    }
}

Wait for the compiler to finish and then go to the Unity editor menu and click on GameObject. At the end of the menu, you will see an item called Create HelloWorld, as shown in the following screenshot:

Click on this item, then a dialog window asks whether you really want to create this game object:

After clicking on Create, a new game object with the name HelloWorld is added to the current scene. You can check this in the Hierarchy window:

You created your first editor script using two things:

A MenuItem attribute to add menu items to the Unity editor menu.
A DisplayDialog method, part of the EditorUtility class, to show a custom model popup.

Don't worry, we will discuss these in depth later in this book. For now, we are going to move forward and discuss something very important in the creation of editor scripts: the Editor folder.

The Editor folder

The Editor folder is one of the special folders Unity has, just like the Resources or Plugins folders.

Like the Unity documentation says, all scripts inside a folder with the name Editor will be treated as editor scripts rather than runtime scripts related to your video game. Also, you can have more than one Editor folder in your project at once if you want.

Tip

To learn more about other special folders in Unity, visit http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/SpecialFolders.html.

If you have at least one Editor folder with a script inside, you will see something like the following in MonoDevelop (in other IDEs, such as Visual Studio or Xamarin, you may see something slightly different, but the concept is the same):

Two different assemblies will be created: the first assembly, Assembly-CSharp, is for your video game scripts and the second assembly, Assembly-CSharp-Editor, is for your editor scripts. This means that the editor scripts will not be included in your final video game build.

So, what is the problem with HelloWorld.cs? Well, right now it' s not inside an Editor folder, so if you try to build a video game with that script included, the build process will fail because Unity won't be able to find the namespace named UnityEditor:

Most of the editor scripts that we will discuss in this book, like custom inspectors in Chapter 3, Creating Custom Inspectors, or editor windows in Chapter 4, Creating Editor Windows require being saved inside an Editor folder in order to work. However, in some situations, it is possible to achieve this without using the Editor folder.

Let's fix the original HelloWorld.cs file to work outside an Editor folder. In this case, we must tell the compiler to not include the editor-related code if we are making a video game build.

To achieve this, we will use the preprocessor directives #if and #endif with the conditional compilation symbol UNITY_EDITOR. Using both together, we can tell the compiler to exclude a block of code when we create a video game build.

Update HelloWorld.cs as follows:

using UnityEngine;
#if UNITY_EDITOR
using UnityEditor;
#endif
public class HelloWorld {
    
    #if UNITY_EDITOR
    [MenuItem ("GameObject/Create HelloWorld")]
    private static void CreateHelloWorldGameObject () {
        if(EditorUtility.DisplayDialog(
            "Hello World", 
            "Do you really want to do this?", 
            "Create", 
            "Cancel")) {
            new GameObject("HelloWorld");
        }
    }
    #endif
    
    // Add your video game code here
}

If you feel a little overwhelmed, just keep in mind that the last script example is an exception, and as a guideline, all the editor scripts must be inside an Editor folder. to keep everything organized and working

Introducing Run & Jump

Run & Jump is a 2D platformer video game created for this book to serve as a base for our editor scripting experiments. In this section, we will talk about the video game and what kind of things we want to achieve.

Keep in mind that it is not important to understand in detail how Run & Jump is implemented. It's enough just to understand the workflows associated with the content creation of this video game.

Playing the video game

In this video game, the player takes control of Timmy, a guy who likes to collect coins and invests his time searching for hidden treasures. On his journey, he needs to avoid obstacles and enemies to reach the finale of each level and win. You can see how the video game looks in the following screenshots:

To play the video game, you will have to clone or download the project from https://github.com/angelotadres/RunAndJump in GitHub.

When you are ready, open the project in Unity. You will see the following folder structure in the Project browser:

To test the game, open the scene Title inside the Scenes folder and then press the Play button in the Unity toolbar:

To control Timmy, use the left and right arrows on your keyboard. Pressing the space bar makes him jump, and pressing it again while he is in the air makes him perform a double jump.

Currently, there are three levels implemented for this video game to test its functionality. In the next section, you will learn how to add more levels.

Creating a new level

In this video game, each level is a Unity scene inside the folder Levels. When you start playing Run & Jump and then select a specific level, the video game call the LevelHandler scene and this starts the script LevelHandlerScene.cs.

This scene has all the GUI necessary for the level, and the script is responsible for the game's status detection (playing, paused, and so on), when the player wins or loses, and loading of the specific level scene using the method Application.LoadLevelAdditive.

Note

Unlike LoadLevel, LoadLevelAdditive does not destroy objects in the current scene. Objects from the new scene are added over the current one.

Each level scene is composed of several prefabs. We will refer to these in the rest of the book as level pieces prefabs.

Navigate to Prefabs | LevelPieces to check the available level piece prefabs. The following table contains a description of each one:

Level Piece	Description
	Timmy (`Player.prefab`): You control this character in the game. Timmy's abilities are run, jump and double jump. There's nothing to envy about the Italian plumber.
	Angry Blob (`EnemyAngryBlob.prefab`): This character moves over platforms from one side to the other with an angry face. You don't like him and he doesn't like you so don't touch him or you will lose a life!
	Coins (`InteractiveCoin.prefab`): It is not a real platform video game without something to collect. Coins are one of the collectibles, and when you pick one, your score increases by 100 points.
	Treasure (`InteractiveTreasure.prefab`): Usually, this collectable is well hidden in order to motivate the player to explore the level. When you pick one, your score increases by 1,000 points.
	Sign (`InteractiveSign.prefab`): This will display a message on the screen when the player is around the sign board. The sign is used to give the player hints or miscellaneous information about the current level.
	Spikes (`HazardSpike.prefab`): These sharp spikes are placed in locations that make it harder to reach your objective. Don't touch them or you will lose a life!
	Dirt (`SolidDirt.prefab`): This is used as a building block for the level.
	Grass (`SolidGrass.prefab`): Like Dirt, this too is used as a building block for the level. The only difference is this it's green on the top.
	Goal flag (`InteractiveGoalFlag.prefab`): The main objective of the video game is to reach the Goal flag at the end of each level. A well-designed level will have a lot of hazards and enemies between you and the goal flag.

To get a better understating of what is involved in creating levels, let's create a new one. The goal is to copy the following level (or at least try to do so):

For this, you need to perform the following steps:

Create a new scene and remove the default camera.
Add a new Game Object to the scene and attach the level.cs script located in Scripts | Level. This script contains the base to make our level work.
Navigate to Prefabs | LevelPieces and clone the prefabs in the scene until you complete creating the level. All the prefabs must be nested inside the game object you created earlier.
When you are done, click again on the root game object. If you check the Inspector window, you will see the following:
Here, you will be able to adjust the properties of the level, such as the maximum time taken to beat the level and get the score bonus, Gravity, Bgm (background music), and Background. You can play with these values: for the Bgm, you can grab an audio clip from the folder Audio/Bgm; and for the background, you can grab a sprite from Art/Bg.
As soon you finish, save the scene inside the folder Levels with the name MyLevel_level.

Tip

To align the prefabs among themselves, select the Transform tool and press and hold the V key to activate the Vertex-Snapping mode.

Run & Jump comes with a custom tool that allows you to set up the order and the name of the levels and also add these to the Scenes in Build list automatically. We must use this in order of make our level usable by the video game (one of the requirements is to include the suffix _level in the name of the scene).

In the Unity editor menu, navigate to Tools | Level Packager | Show Levels Package:

This will display the following in the Inspector window:

Currently, there are only three levels listed, so click on the + icon to create a new item in the list. Now, add the scene you created in right column and add the string My Level in the left column. This will add your level as the fourth one.

Save the changes by clicking on the Commit Levels button.

To check the scene you created, open the scene Title inside the Scenes folder, and then click on the Play button to run the video game:

Now you know the necessary amount of effort it takes to create a level for this game; so let's make this level creation process the first thing to improve.

The Level Creator tool

Imagine a scenario where you are responsible for generating several levels for Run & Jump. You know this task is time consuming, and copying and pasting prefabs to place them in the right position is not the most efficient way to achieve this.

Basically, most of the 2D level editors use a Canvas/Brush metaphor to design the user interaction. This means the level scene is your canvas and using the mouse cursor as a brush, you paint over it level prefab instances.

Taking this in to consideration, the first thing we will create is a tool called Level Creator to make this process easier using the Canvas/Brush metaphor, and of course, in the process, we will cover several editor scripting topics.

The features of the Level Creator are as follows:

Automates the creation of a scene capable of being used as a level. This means that you can generate a scene with a game object, and the level script attached to it, with just a simple click.
Displays a grid on the Scene View option to be used as a reference. All the level piece prefabs will snap to this grid by default.
Controls and validates how the properties of the level script are changed.
Improves the visibility of the available level pieces prefabs by creating a Palette window to show a preview. This classifies the prefabs by their category.
Implements the Canvas/Brush metaphor allowing four modes: view, paint, edit, and erase level pieces prefabs.
Customizes the look and feel of the tool to improve its own appearance.

For now, let's focus on automating the creation of a scene capable to be used as a level.

Note

As you notice, Run & Jump is fully playable at it is but we are going to make a few improvements in its implementation to achieve a seamless integration with the Level Creator tool. Is because of that, all the current levels aren't be editable by the tool.

All the design decisions in this book were taken in order to make easy to understand the code related to editor scripting.

Defining the chapter goals

In the rest of this chapter, we will work on the first scripts of the Level Creator tool in order to automate the creation of a scene capable to be used as a level.

The goals here are:

Create a new Unity scene by code
Add a game object with the level script attached to it to the scene by code
Create a menu item to trigger the creation of a scene capable to be used as a level in the Unity editor menu

Preparing the environment

We need to create a few folders to keep our development organized. Remember, for this entire book, we are working on the Run & Jump project.

You will find a folder called Tools in the root of the project. Right now this folder has one inside with the scripts of the tool we used to add our levels to the game.

Inside the Tools folder, create a new folder called LevelCreator and then match the folder structure, as shown in the following screenshot:

This folder structure is just a suggestion, but you must always consider creating a root folder for your custom tools.

Performing automation

As we were saying, we want to create a scene capable to be used as a level, but instead doing this manually in Unity, we are going to achieve the same using code.

We are going to implement a few methods to do this. Inside the folder Tools/LevelCreator/Editor, create a new script called EditorUtils.cs and add the following code:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;
using System.Collections.Generic;

namespace RunAndJump.LevelCreator {
  public static class EditorUtils {
        
    // Creates a new scene
    public static void NewScene () {
      EditorApplication.SaveCurrentSceneIfUserWantsTo ();
      EditorApplication.NewScene ();
    }

    // Remove all the elements of the scene
    public static void CleanScene () {
      GameObject[] allObjects = Object.FindObjectsOfType<GameObject> ();
      foreach (GameObject go in allObjects) {
        GameObject.DestroyImmediate (go);
      }
    }

    // Creates a new scene capable to be used as a level
    public static void NewLevel () {
      NewScene ();
      CleanScene ();
      GameObject levelGO = new GameObject ("Level");
      levelGO.transform.position = Vector3.zero;
      levelGO.AddComponent<Level> ();
    }
  }
}

The NewLevel method is the one that executes all the work using the help of the following two methods:

NewScene: This creates a new scene, but before doing that, asks whether we want to save the scene that is currently open. All this is done using EditorApplication, a static class with several methods to know the state of the editor (playing, paused, compiling, and so on) and create, save, or load scenes and projects.
CleanScene: This removes all the elements of the scene. Remember the camera created by default with each scene in Unity? Well, this method is going to take care of that using the DestroyImmediate method. This is similar to the common Destroy method but this works in an Editor context.

Note

To learn more about the EditorApplication class, visit http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/EditorApplication.html.

Tip

In order to avoid class name conflicts, it's always a good idea to use namespaces. In this project, all the video game classes are in the RunAndJump namespace and the Level Creator classes are in the LevelCreator.RunAndJump namespace.

Similar to the HelloWorld example we created at the beginning of this chapter, we need to make the NewLevel method accessible through the Unity editor menu using the MenuItem attribute.

Inside the folder Tools/LevelCreator/Editor, create a new script called MenuItems.cs. We will use this to add all the future menu items that the tool requires; for now, add the following code:

using UnityEngine;
using UnityEditor;

namespace RunAndJump.LevelCreator {
  public static class MenuItems {
        
        [MenuItem ("Tools/Level Creator/New Level Scene")]
        private static void NewLevel () {
            EditorUtils.NewLevel ();
        }
    }        
}

Now, the NewLevel method will be available when you navigate to Tools | Level Creator | New Level Scene. Save all the scripts changes and for Unity to compile, then click on New Level Scene:

A dialog window will ask you whether you want to save the current changes of the scene (if this one has modifications):

After this, a new scene will be created with the game object containing the level script:

Congratulations! We have the starting point for the Level Creator tool creating a level scene with just one click!

Description

One of Unity's most powerful features is the extensible editor it has. With editor scripting, it is possible to extend or create functionalities to make video game development easier. For a Unity developer, this is an important topic to know and understand because adapting Unity editor scripting to video games saves a great deal of time and resources. This book is designed to cover all the basic concepts of Unity editor scripting using a functional platformer video game that requires workflow improvement. You will commence with the basics of editor scripting, exploring its implementation with the help of an example project, a level editor, before moving on to the usage of visual cues for debugging with Gizmos in the scene view. Next, you will learn how to create custom inspectors and editor windows and implement custom GUI. Furthermore, you will discover how to change the look and feel of the editor using editor GUIStyles and editor GUISkins. You will then explore the usage of editor scripting in order to improve the development pipeline of a video game in Unity by designing ad hoc editor tools, customizing the way the editor imports assets, and getting control over the build creation process. Step by step, you will use and learn all the key concepts while creating and developing a pipeline for a simple platform video game. As a bonus, the final chapter will help you to understand how to share content in the Asset Store that shows the creation of custom tools as a possible new business. By the end of the book, you will easily be able to extend all the concepts to other projects.

What you will learn

Use Gizmos to create visual aids for debugging

Extend the editor capabilities using custom inspectors, property and decorator drawers, editor windows, and handles

Save your video game data in a persistent way using scriptable objects

Improve the look and feel of your custom tools using GUIStyles and GUISkins

Configure and control the asset import pipeline

Improve the build creation pipeline

Distribute the custom tools in your team or publish them in the Asset Store

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Matthew Magginnis Dec 07, 2015

This is a great book to dive into the unity editor with. I've personally been working with Unity for over 5 years and have done a lot of editor coding myself and this book teaches you some very valuable ways to create editor tools for any project. The code is pretty clean, but not documented much if at all in some parts. This isn't a huge issue as the the author explains the code in the text to give you an understanding on what it's doing.If you are a beginner with editor scripts & C#, this might be a bit challenging for you as this book quickly gets into some of the more intermediate level scripting techniques that may be difficult to understand. For those that have some experience in both, this will be a pleasure to learn from as it covers some pretty moderate problems when creating tools for the unity editor.Overall this is a great book to learn from as well as use for reference to build editor tools in Unity. The example project that the author has you create through the book is a great way to see how creating editor tools can increase the workflow and development time for all your projects.

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joekelly Dec 06, 2015

One of the best Unity books I've purchased. I buy a lot of Packt books, and this one is full of great tips and tricks. If you have been using Unity for a while, and are looking to improve your editor scripting, you definitely can't go wrong here. Well laid out, great information and examples.

GameDev Nov 21, 2016

Amazing book.

sean321 Nov 11, 2018

I used this to learn how to build a custom level editor for a 2d tile-based game that I'm working on. The information pertaining to custom gizmos and editor windows is invaluable. Great source. Highly recommended.

Guilherme Nov 27, 2015

I would say It's “the cookbook of customization”. I read many books about Unity to improve my skills but I finally found an interesting book that I can learn different things as how to customize my own tools at the inspector and my scene view, exploring the gizmos to improve my organization, how to set up Git and other cool tricks. The examples are easy to understand and they are done with Unity 5.x with C# with code commented by the author.

Extending Unity with Editor Scripting: Put Unity to use for your video games by creating your own custom tools with editor scripting

What do you get with Print?

Extending Unity with Editor Scripting

Chapter 1. Getting Started with Editor Scripting

Overview

Editor scripting basics

What is an editor script?

The Editor folder

Tip

Introducing Run & Jump

Playing the video game

Creating a new level

Note

Tip

The Level Creator tool

Note

Defining the chapter goals

Preparing the environment

Performing automation

Note

Tip

Summary

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