Using Metadata

Metadata objects (sometimes referred to as Metadata "Blocks") are sprinkled throughout the Recolude landscape to allow developers to easily capture important information about what's going on inside their application in a loose and fast manner. The Metadata class essentially acts as a wrapper around a Dictionary<string, IProperty>, providing extra utilities for storing and retrieving info.

Using Properties

A metadata block can contain multiple different types of properties at once. Implemented data types a property can take on includes (both individual and array):

• string
• int32
• float32
• boolean
• byte
• Vector2
• Vector3
• Metadata
• Time

Implementing New Property Types

It's possible to extend the IProperty interface to allow the Metadata block to hold bespoke data types, but the RAPWriter will drop these values upon serialization. All properties include a Code method used to denote it's data type when being serialized to RAP. Because this method returns a single byte, there is only 256 different property types that could ever be stored. The byte codes 0 - 199 are reserved for future Recolude implementation. Therefor, if you want to create a new Property, be sure have it return a code value between 200 and 255.

Example Usage

// Store information about a collision
var metadata = new Metadata();
metadata["collided-with"] = new StringProperty("Wall");
metadata["collision-velocity"] = new FloatProperty(21.23f);
metadata["collision-normal"] = new Vector3Property(0.56f, -0.71f, 0.42f);
metadata["collision-position"] = new Vector3Property(17.15, 33.23, 81.51f);

// Use the collision data at a later time to construct FX during playback
var fxInstance = Instantiate<GameObject>(effectPrefab).transform;
fxInstance.position = metadata.AsVector3("collision-position");
fxInstance.localScale = Vector3.forward * metadata.AsFloat("collision-velocity");
fxInstance.LookAt(fxInstance.position + metadata.AsVector3("collision-normal"));