Sorting Game Entities by Custom Criteria in Unity - Challenges with Performance and Memory Usage
I tried several approaches but none seem to work... Currently developing an indie game where I need to sort a list of game entities based on custom criteria, such as health, distance from the player, and their type. The complexity arises because I want to maintain performance, especially since our game handles a large number of entities at once. I've started by using LINQ for the sorting, as it offers great readability and flexibility. Here’s a snippet of what I've been trying: ```csharp using System.Linq; using UnityEngine; using System.Collections.Generic; public class Entity { public float Health; public float DistanceFromPlayer; public string Type; } public class EntitySorter : MonoBehaviour { public List<Entity> entities; void SortEntities() { var sortedEntities = entities.OrderBy(e => e.Health) .ThenBy(e => e.DistanceFromPlayer) .ThenBy(e => e.Type) .ToList(); } } ``` While this approach works on small datasets, I've noticed that performance starts to degrade when the list grows beyond a few hundred entities. This becomes particularly problematic during peak gameplay moments when the frame rate starts to drop. I’ve also experimented with implementing a custom comparison method using IComparer, thinking it might optimize the sorting operation: ```csharp public class EntityComparer : IComparer<Entity> { public int Compare(Entity x, Entity y) { int healthComparison = x.Health.CompareTo(y.Health); if (healthComparison == 0) { int distanceComparison = x.DistanceFromPlayer.CompareTo(y.DistanceFromPlayer); return distanceComparison == 0 ? x.Type.CompareTo(y.Type) : distanceComparison; } return healthComparison; } } ``` Then I can sort with: ```csharp entities.Sort(new EntityComparer()); ``` This implementation has provided some improvement, but I'm still not satisfied with the performance when the list size increases. What I haven’t tried yet is optimizing the way that I manage the entities themselves; perhaps pooling might help reduce the overhead. Any suggestions on effective sorting strategies or performance profiling tips specific to Unity would be greatly appreciated. Also, if there are better design patterns or architectural adjustments I should consider at this stage, I'm all ears! My development environment is Linux. What am I doing wrong? My team is using C# for this CLI tool. Is there a better approach?