UnityCollections

This library contains a handful of small data types, wrappers, and collections that I have found useful in Unity projects in the past.

Installation

Install via Git

1. Open Window/Package Manager
2. Click the + button
3. Select Add Package From Git URL
4. Paste https://github.com/jonagill/UnityCollections.git?path=Packages/com.jonagill.unitycollections into the URL field
5. Click Install

Installation via OpenUPM

To install via OpenUPM:

1. Open Edit/Project Settings/Package Manager
2. Add a new Scoped Registry (or edit the existing OpenUPM entry) to read:
   • Name: package.openupm.com
   • URL: https://package.openupm.com
   • Scope(s): com.jonagill.unitycollections
3. Click Save (or Apply)
4. Open Window/Package Manager
5. Click the + button
6. Select Add package by name...
7. Click Add

Contents

ListEvent

A replacement for traditional System.Action and System.Action<T> event delegates. System.Action is immutable, which means the entire array of subscribers must be re-allocated every time you add or remove a subscriber. While this is cheap for events with one or two subscribers, it can become extremely expensive for global events that hundreds or even thousands of objects are subscribing to. ListEvent has a similar API to System.Action but is backed by a standard C# List<T>, allowing the same memory to be re-used as objects are added and removed from the collection. This drastically reduces the amount of garbage generated, which can have large performance savings depending on your usages.

TokenFlag

TokenFlag provides an API for a boolean flag that can be set from multiple sources. This is extremely helpful for managing things like pause state or object visibility that you want to set from multiple different systems without them stomping each other.

Pooled collections

PooledList<T>, PooledDictionary<T>, and PooledHashSet<T> are all wrappers around Unity's existing UnityEngine.Pool APIs (available in Unity 2020.1 and above). These wrapper types implement IDisposable, allowing you to allocate and return a pooled collection easily and robustly with traditional C# using statements. Each class can be utilized directly via the relevant collection interfaces, but they all also expose the backing data via a property for cases where you need to pass them to an API that expects the underlying collection type.

For example:

using PooledList<Collider> pooledColliders = new();
GetComponentsInChildren(pooledColliders.BackingList);

foreach (var childCollider in pooledColliders) 
{
   // Do a thing
}

// There is no need to manually return our list to the pool
// as we declared it via using, so it will automatically be
// disposed as soon as it falls out of scope