Unity - Handling external data files

Question

I'm moving from an old game dev tool to Unity, and wondering how to go about handling external data files.

In my previous program I'd set up external (txt/ini) files like this:

[Group1]
Count=1
1=Hello

[Group2]
Count=2
1=lol
2=end

Then I would simply reference which group name and line I wanted to pull.

What's the equivalent to this in unity? I see I can import TextAssets but I can't find functions to pull select data from it. Do these exist?

Do I have to split by lines, loop through them all and convert it into groups (lists) manually? What is the standard method for doing this? Is it moving to xml files?

Answer 1

It's generally better to use ScriptableObject assets rather than text files.

For example,

[CreateAssetMenu(fileName="Level Data", menuName="Level Data")]
public class LevelAsset : ScriptableObject {
    [Range(60, 300)]
    [SerializeField] private float duration;
    [Range(1, 20)]
    [SerializeField] private int obstacles;

    public float Duration => duration;
    public int Obstacles => obstacles;
}

This adds a new entry called "Level Data" to the "Create" menu (right-click in the Project panel and choose Create, or go to Assets > Create in the menu. Selecting this entry will create a new asset file which you can edit in the Inspector.

You can create as many assets of this type as you wish, and reference them from your scripts.

The GUI-driven interface in the Inspector is safer and easier to use than manually created text files. As you can see in the example, it's type-safe and you can even apply constraints such as [Range()]. When needed, you can even create your own Editors which override the default inspector appearance.