Scriptable Object References to Prefabs

Old post but there are 79 people following this Q so i'll answer it.

I can confirm it will indeed load all referenced objects into memory.

The solution (or at least my solution), as you rightly suggested, would be to change the ScriptableObect prefab variable types from GameObject to strings, have a 'dummy' GameObject in the inspector script for your ScriptableObject and once it is not null (i.e. the designer has drag/dropped the prefab, save the path of the prefab. Then, at a later time when the designer clicks back on the ScriptableObject, it checks to see if the string path is !string.IsNullOrEmpty(yourPrefabPathString), then loads that prefab into the drag/drop slot. So visually it looks like you have a prefab object referenced while internally it's loading it on the fly and not saving it when you click off the ScriptableObject.

During runtime, to load the prefab from the path don't forget to clean up the path string by removing everything up to the end of 'Resources/' and the extension of the file with:

path = path.Remove (0, path.IndexOf ("Resources")+10); //+10 bc resources = 9 chars + 1 for '/'

path = path.Remove (path.IndexOf (".")); //Removes the extension

e.g.\Assets\MyAwesomeGame\Resources\Textures\Enemies\BigScaryGhost.png

becomes

Textures\Enemies\BigScaryGhost

and you can now load the big scary ghost with ' Resources.Load(path); '

Hope this helps!

I had the same problem some years ago:

We had a dictionary of ids vs prefabs in a WorldTiles prefab. Once the worldtiles was loaded, all of the referenced prefabs were loaded in memory aswell.

In the end we had to change the values to strings pointing the paths in the resources folder, as stated.

I didn't know if with the scriptableobjects happened the same, but i suspected it. In my next project i was going to try the scriptableobject approach, but you saved me a lot of time trying it out. thanks!

Anything in the Resources will be loaded into the memory when the app runs. I don't understand how you gain any benefit by putting your prefabs there and referencing them by a string.