I wrote this Dynamic Objects Pooling C# code to make it easier for other programmers to pool their objects and nodes.
The code is not optomized yet, but hopefully I'll make it as optimized as I can by next update.
Here's a demo of how objects are pooling:
- A dictionary for PackedScenes and their queues.
- Store and retreive objects.
- Get queues' root Node's names and counts.
- ToString() method to retreive Pool's counts.
- A static Pool.instance reference to make life slightly easier. It also checks if the instance is empty or not before Initializing.
To use this script:
- Copy
Pool.csto your project's folder - To initialize the Pool, write
Pool pool = new Pool(PackedScene[], parentNode);Where:
PackedScene[]is an array of the PackedScenes you want to pool.parentNodeis a node that all Instantiated scenes from the PackedScenes will be child of.
Generally speaking, you'd want to Initialize the pool in early stages of your project. So probably somewhere inside a public override void _EnterTree() or something like that.
Its preferrable to initialize the script inside _EnterTree() with the following calls:
Pool pool = New Pool(PackedScene[], parentNode);
There's a static Pool.instance where the class constructor would check if its empty and use it if it was empty.
PackedScene[] must be an array of PackedScenes, whether provided from an [Export]-ed array or directly read from a directory.
parentNode is used as an initial parent to the Scenes instantiated from PackedScenes, and to reparent unwanted nodes.
To get a Node from the pool, you can simply do the following:
Node node = Pool.instance.Get("NAME");
Where NAME is the PackedScene's root node's name (Case sensitive).
To store a node back in the pool, you can simply do the following:
Pool.instance.Store(NODE, "NAME");
Where NODE is the node you want to store in the pool.
Make sure that you hide the stored object (Usually by .visible = false).
And, as mentioned above, NAME is the PackedScene's root node's name (Case sensitive).
I know adding "NAME" to store a node back to the pool is inconvenient at best, but it beats having multiple lists/Dictionaries and try to match names with PackedScenes and have some additional loops.
Find better ways to retreive and store Nodes without having to use the PackedScenes root's Node name as a lookup key.
Also, learning how to write better readme.so files is necessary.