In Unity, what's a better solution than having a bunch of singleton static managers? (SceneManager, UIManager, SfxManager, PfxManager)

Question

I always hand a bunch of public static manager classes in my game:

• GameManager (singleton) for reading and writing persistent data and gamestate across scenes
• SceneManager for holding scene data (coins picked up, score, are we in a cutscene)
• UIManager for dealing with HUD stuff
• SfxManager for sound effects
• PfxManager for particle effects

On the gameobject that holds these manager classes, there are also subordinate classes (e.g. HUDManager, a smaller class that managers tasks specific to HUD, and then delegate those tasks into other smaller scripts) in order to avoid monolithic manager classes.

Is this method frowned upon in Unity game development and if so, what are some better solutions than this approach?

Answer 1

My usual approach is to minimize managers by creating smarter gameObjects which have their own controllers.

• "coins picked up" and "score" are properties of the player, so they should be on the player game object.
• Instead of an UI Manager, I create controllers for individual UI elements. When they show information about a gameObject (like player.score), they reference a gameObject in the scene.
• Instead of an Sfx Manager, I use objects with audio sources which might or might not have controllers which control that one audio source.

But if the manager-pattern feels natural to you, then you might feel right at home with the new DOTS architecture, where all the game logic is in managers (called "Systems").