[Music] Foreign to this video that was voted for by my patreon members. So thank you for everyone who voted for data assets. In this episode, we're going to go through and explain how data assets are used, why you may want to use them, and what are the benefits and differences of using them compared to data tables. So let's get started. Okay, so let's talk about data assets. So the whole purpose of a data asset is a way of storing information. Now you may already be familiar with using data tables, and data assets are just another way of storing data, just like data tables already store data too. So let's take for example our data table set up. We have a structure which defines this resource with a name, description, mesh, etc., and sell value, and we made a data table with those values in there. Or flower, crystal, and iron ingot, and mushroom with various information in there. Now you'd have in here all the items in your game defined here, just read-only data table. Now the issue with that data tables are

is that they are um can be quite cumbersome um because they can get very very large, and if they are very very large, you run into an issue where the data table takes longer longer to go through because it has so many rows. Whenever you are doing a fine data table row, what it's doing is going through each row sequentially to find the right one. Now what may actually be better and easier is if you have each row of this as its own asset. That's essentially what a data asset is. So let's go for the process of creating a data asset. So I'm going to go over to our I'll just here. I'll just make a new folder, keep this a bit tighter, and in here we'll have in here a pretty big class, and you go to all classes and search for primary data asset, click that, and we'll name it. We'll go um resource data asset, and in here you give it variables much like how we gave it that structure for the data table. So in here we're going to

have the name, which is a text field. We have a description. We'll also have in here mesh. It's going to use mesh and do static mesh. What now um, we have a stack size, which is an integer aim that one, and we have a cell cost. That'll be a float. Okay, so you're putting all the variables you have in here like so, but as you can see, you can have other things in it. So not just uh you uh, as just like a data table, which has just data on it, a data asset can also have functions and event dispatchers on there too. So you can actually put Logic on there to run on the data asset. So this can be very useful if you wanted to do calculations, for example um, like in other words what we do here, this cell cost is we'll go to functions, we'll make a new one to get um, new uh, it looks a new discounted sell cost, and that could give us an input for a float, and that'd be the percentage of it. So um, we'll do a factor.

and the output for that would be the new value new cell cost, and we just simply take that factor there and multiply that by this so cost. Okay, so we've got this function here that we can easily get hold of not just the cell cost but also add a multiplier to it. So if you want to get a 10% discount, just multiply by 0.9. So more or less than a second when we go into it, I'll show you how to hold it up, but just so you know, you can do things like this. In fact, we'll make this a pure function whilst we're here. Okay, so that is how you define a data asset. Let's actually make one though. Just right-click in here again and go to miscellaneous and choose data asset in the drop down. It'll ask you to pick the one you want to use. We're going to use the resource data asset, so let's find that. There it is. And now we can create our data assets. So in here we're going to have a flower.

and open it up, and you just put in the information you want to have a flower. Is yellow flower has been said to have healing properties. I would give it the mesh so we'll create that one stack size. We'll do 99 sell cost to do 5.5 right right, and if I want to make another one, I just do the exact same method again. You create another one. So you go to here miscellaneous date of asset and so on. However, you may find that a bit tedious after a while. So what you can do is just right-click on your file here, duplicate it, and then you can do the next one. We'll do mushroom, for example. And in there, we can choose the mushroom we want to use. Go back here mushroom mushroom, and that'll be this fungi is right in a soup. And you can change the upper values obviously to whatever you like, and you just keep going on and on and on. Now another really useful thing about data assets is that because they are single assets here um which makes them better.

for memory but also it helps you just organize yourself a little bit better so rather than having a long list inside a data table which you can search obviously you can actually just put in folders here another organization methods to help you store locate and um reuse your data assets throughout your project so let's say I've done all of my data assets and I really don't want to use it in the game so let's make a little actor that I pick up to give me that asset so I'll go over here create a new blueprint class new actor and that be item and we can go in here and say give this a mesh so and then go to the verbals down here and give it a data asset so just click data and in the drop down or search my resource data asset now when I compile that I can choose which one this is going to be over here so let's say for example I make this one editable and on the construction script I'll drag out my data available convert it to a validated get so if it

hasn't been set. It won't do anything, but when it gets the data, I'm going to drag out and search for mesh. It's just like looking for another variable on any other actor. So, do get mesh and now I can set that now to my aesthetic mesh component. So, set mesh. So, I'll save. So now, if I drag this item into the world, so there I can click on a data asset option here, choose flower, and it'll put in a flower. Change the mushroom, it'd be a mushroom. Okay, and if we're going to play a character, you're doing an inventory of sorts. It works exactly the same as if you're storing row names for a data table, right? So, row names, you store data assets. So, you may be familiar with a variable type such as this for inventory. We have inventory set to a name and a map finish, just so you know how many items you've got of each one, rather than using name, just change it to your resource data asset pile and save. So, when I want to add an

item to inventory just dragging that out there and doing add. And you just choosing the data asset from the drop down or plugging it in and the quantity. And much like how you do a row name or anything else. So it's very very similar in that regard. And it is similar in a sense that it is read only. So you can't change any data inside of a data asset. You can only read from it. But as mentioned earlier, you can do certain things with it. So for example, if my player character wants to sell something. So do a function here called sell item. And in here we're going to go to the variables and set to resource data asset item. I don't want to sell the item. I could drag this out and I get the sell cost. So to sell cost. And you'll see get discounted sell cost. This is the function we made earlier. So I can call the function on my data asset. Give it a factor here of saying 0.9. And give myself a 10 discount. So I can sell that.

and now do the logic here to actually get that money out onto my character but there you go. Data assets are really cool, useful tools especially because of those functions you can do, but do try them out. I've been using a lot more lately and been enjoying my time with them. So there you have it, data assets are a wonderful tool that's been added to Unreal Engine, and I strongly recommend trying them out. They're good fun and very much a nice, easy way to manage large amounts of data. Now if you want to vote for other videos, head over to patreon.com/RyanBailey where you can become a silver team member and start voting for next month's videos right now. Thank you so much to our patreon members for the content support, and I'll see you all next time. Bye everyone, thank you. [Music] [Music] [Music]

Unreal Engine 5 Tutorial - Data Assets

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