Baking discovered assets

[sweet axle]

i want to bake an entire subfolder of assets into a dynamicbuffer of baked prefab entities

this "works":

class MySO : ScriptableObject { public GameObject prefab; }

struct R : IBufferElementData { public Entity prefab; }

class MyAuthoring : MonoBehaviour {
  class Baker : Baker<MyAuthoring> {
    public override void Bake(MyAuthoring a) {
      var buf = AddBuffer<R>(GetEntity(a));
      foreach(var r in Resources.LoadAll<MySO>("MySOs")) {
        buf.Add(new R{ prefab = GetEntity(r.prefab) });

...but it doesn't update when new assets are created; i wasn't able to find anything relevant to this in struct BakeDependencies

i can add a dummy variable to MyAuthoring that triggers rebaking but of course that requires manually incrementing it whenever something changes

is there a "blessed" way to achieve this?

if not i'm thinking of creating an editor tool that runs automatically on asset database updates, computes a hash of asset paths, and updates it into the authoring component in all subscenes containing that component, but that's a lot of work...

[scenic plume]

about to sleep so my answer is going to be short

but i basically just autoref scriptableobjects onto a 'manager' scriptable object

    [CreateAssetMenu(menuName = "BovineLabs/AI/Agent", fileName = "AIAgent")]
    [AutoRef("AIAgentSettings", "graphs")]
    public class AIAgentAsset : GraphAsset<AIAgentContext>, IUID
    {
        [SerializeField]
        private int id;

        public override int ID
        {
            get => this.id;
            set => this.id = value;
        }
    }```

AutoRef means any AIAgentAsset created will be automatically added to the AIAgentSettings.graphs field

this means my baker can just depend on AIAgentSettings

when a new graph as added to the graphs field, the baker automatically updates

[sweet axle]

hmm yea that makes a lot of sense and would be simpler

[scenic plume]

https://gitlab.com/tertle/com.bovinelabs.core/-/blob/1.3.4/BovineLabs.Core/ObjectManagement/AutoRefAttribute.cs

source code is all public

[sweet axle]

thanks, i'll try that approach!

[scenic plume]

https://gitlab.com/tertle/com.bovinelabs.core/-/blob/1.3.4/BovineLabs.Core.Editor/ObjectManagement/ObjectManagementProcessor.cs

the post processor that handles it

that's most of it, heading to bed though - thought i'd just give you some inspiration

there's a lot more extra in this solution for other features

[sweet axle]

yep that's just what i needed, i can probably whip up a minimal version for my current needs pretty quickly referencing yours

[scenic plume]

the iuid stuff is just a branch safe auto ID solution for assets, you can ignore that if you dont need

really just the autoref for your specific problem

just for completeness if anyone is reading and doesn't understand,

    internal class AIAgentSettings : ScriptableObject, ISettings
    {
        [SerializeField]
        private List<AIAgentAsset> graphs = new();
    ```
is the manager referenced in the AutoRef

[tidal raft]

Meanwhile I suggest opposite. Instead of attribute on type that wants to be gathered - have an attribute/special class on type that wants to gather. For exampl eon AIAgentSettings. Will help in cases where you want to gather 3rd party types.

Implementation is exactly same though

[scenic plume]

It's not really the same because you don't know if a random asset that appears needs to go somewhere, you just brute force it on all types

I'm actually familiar with your implemention now as I spent a couple hours today trying to figure out why it's broken.