A Grab-Bag

Various Unity Helpers. Includes many deterministic, seedable random number generators.

CI/CD Status

Compatibility

Platform	Compatible
Unity 2021	Likely, but untested
Unity 2022	✓
Unity 2023	✓
Unity 6	✓
URP	✓
HDRP	✓

Installation

To Install as Unity Package

1. Open Unity Package Manager
2. (Optional) Enable Pre-release packages to get the latest, cutting-edge builds
3. Open the Advanced Package Settings
4. Add an entry for a new "Scoped Registry"
   • Name: NPM
   • URL: https://registry.npmjs.org
   • Scope(s): com.wallstop-studios.unity-helpers
5. Resolve the latest com.wallstop-studios.unity-helpers

From Source

Grab a copy of this repo (either git clone or download a zip of the source) and copy the contents to your project's Assets folder.

From Releases

Check out the latest Releases to grab the Unity Package and import to your project.

Package Contents

• Random Number Generators
• Spatial Trees
• Protobuf, Binary, and JSON formatting
• A resizable CyclicBuffer
• Simple single-threaded thread pool
• A LayeredImage for use with Unity's UI Toolkit
• Geometry Helpers
• Child/Parent/Sibling Attributes to automatically get components
• ReadOnly attribute to disable editing of serialized properties in the inspector
• An extensive collection of helpers
• Simple math functions including a generic Range
• Common buffers to reduce allocations
• A RuntimeSingleton implementation for automatic creation/accessing of singletons
• String helpers, like converting to PascalCase, like Unity does for variable names in the inspector
• A randomizable PerlinNoise implementation
• And more!

Auto Get(Parent/Sibling/Child)Component

Are you tired of constantly writing GetComponent() all over the place? Waste time no more!

public sealed class MyCoolScript : MonoBehaviour
{
    [SiblingComponent] // If it doesn't exist, will log an error
    private SpriteRenderer _spriteRenderer;

    [SiblingComponent(optional = true)] // Ok if it doesn't exist, no errors logged
    private BoxCollider2D _boxCollider;

    [ParentComponent] // Similar to GetComponentInParent<AIController>(includeInactive: true)
    private AIController _parentAIController;

    // Only include components in parents, Unity by default includes sibling components in the GetComponentsInParent call
    [ParentComponent(onlyAncestors = true)] 
    private Transform [] _allParentTransforms; // Works with arrays!

    [ParentComponent(includeInactive = false)] // Don't include inactive components
    private List<PolygonCollider2> _parentColliders; // Works with lists!

    [ChildComponent(onlyDescendents = true)] // Similar to GetComponentInChildren<EdgeCollider2D>(includeInactive: true)
    private EdgeCollider2D _childEdgeCollider;

    private void Awake()
    {
        /*
            Make sure this is called somewhere, usually in Awake, OnEnable, or Start - wherever this is called,
             values will be injected into the annotated fields and errors will be logged
        */
        this.AssignRelationalComponents();
    }
}

Random Number Generators

This package implements several high quality, seedable, and serializable random number generators. The best one (currently) is the PCG Random. This has been hidden behind the PRNG.Instance class, which is thread-safe. As the package evolves, the exact implementation of this may change.

All of these implement a custom IRandom interface with a significantly richer suite of methods than the standard .Net and Unity randoms offer.

To use:

IRandom random = PRNG.Instance;

random.NextFloat(); // Something between 0.0f and 1.0f
random.NextDouble(); // Something between 0.0d and 1.0d
random.Next(); // Something between 0 and int.MaxValue
random.NextUint(); // Something between 0 and uint.MaxValue

int [] values = {1, 2, 3};
random.NextOf(values); // 1, 2, or 3
random.NextOf(Enumerable.Range(0, 3)); // 1, 2, or 3
HashSet<int> setValues = new() {1, 2, 3};
random.NextOf(setValues); // 1, 2, or 3

random.NextGuid(); // A valid UUIDv4
random.NextGaussian(); // A value sampled from a gaussian curve around mean=0, stdDev=1 (configurable via parameters)
random.NextEnum<T>(); // A randomly selected enum of type T

int width = 100;
int height = 100;
random.NextNoiseMap(width, height); // A configurable noise map generated using random octave offsets

Implemented Random Number Generators

• PCG
• DotNet (uses the currently implemented .Net Random)
• RomoDuo
• SplitMix64
• Squirrel
• System (uses a port of the Windows .Net Random)
• Unity (uses Unity's random under the hood)
• Wy
• XorShift
• XorShiro

Performance (Number of Operations / Second)

Random	NextBool	Next	NextUInt	NextFloat	NextDouble	NextUint - Range	NextInt - Range
PcgRandom	34,260,478	34,303,866	35,148,246	24,818,438	30,034,632	22,436,474	20,801,797
SystemRandom	28,698,806	30,040,782	20,435,092	24,079,399	27,284,147	20,735,769	19,861,780
SquirrelRandom	33,285,784	33,439,909	34,611,893	23,885,731	28,958,725	21,520,279	20,311,372
XorShiftRandom	34,695,989	35,147,320	35,997,718	25,248,238	31,582,991	22,679,928	21,255,319
DotNetRandom	18,097,489	18,191,042	18,783,063	14,061,444	15,730,439	13,284,050	12,596,913
WyRandom	28,490,852	29,086,052	29,724,907	20,252,065	24,542,201	18,474,790	17,404,641
SplitMix64	34,301,843	34,343,404	35,512,284	24,289,416	30,586,231	22,470,330	20,850,965
RomuDuo	32,969,889	33,413,212	34,339,227	23,755,059	29,483,136	21,671,641	20,253,479
XorShiroRandom	31,529,025	31,717,709	32,536,277	22,421,715	27,619,417	20,843,993	19,270,063
UnityRandom	24,925,268	24,830,594	26,429,283	17,864,528	21,206,384	16,376,626	15,528,972
LinearCongruentialGenerator	35,013,818	35,025,182	35,843,533	25,093,401	31,553,487	22,579,798	21,211,175

Spatial Trees

There are three implemented 2D immutable spatial trees that can store generic objects, as long as there is some resolution function that can convert them into Vector2 spatial positions.

• QuadTree (easiest to use)
• KDTree
• RTree

Spatial trees, after construction, allow for O(log(n)) spatial query time instead of O(n). They are extremely useful if you need repeated spatial queries, or if you have relatively static spatial data.

Usage

GameObject [] spatialStorage = { myCoolGameObject };
QuadTree<GameObject> quadTree = new(spatialStorage, go => go.transform.position);

// Might return your object, might not
GameObject [] inBounds = quadTree.GetElementsInBounds(new Bounds(0, 0, 100, 100));

// Uses a "good-enough" nearest-neighbor approximately for cheap neighbors
List<GameObject> nearestNeighbors = new();
quadTree.GetApproximateNearestNeighbors(myCoolGameObject.transform.position, 1, nearestNeighbors);
Assert.AreEqual(1, nearestNeighbors.Count);
Assert.AreEqual(myCoolGameObject, nearestNeighbors[0]);

Note

All spatial trees expect the positional data to be immutable. It is very important that the positions do not change. If they do, you will need to reconstruct the tree.