Creating a Basic Scene Manager in Unity

Changing scenes is one of the most important aspects of game development in Unity Engine. Scene Management is used to organise different parts or levels of a game or application. It is mainly used for loading, unloading and preloading scenes, menu navigation, and level restart.

Setting up the Project

Let's create an empty Unity project to implement a Scene Manager in the game.

• To create a new Scene, right-click your mouse on the Assets Panel area and select Create > Scene.
• Create two scenes named Scene 1 and Scene 2.

Here, we are trying to achieve a functionality where we can change a scene from Scene 1 to Scene 2 by pressing a UI button in the respective scene.

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Creating a SceneManager Script

• To make the project more organised, create a folder in the assets panel named Scripts.

• Then, inside the folder, right-click and select Create > C# Script, and call it SceneChanger.

• Open the script by double-clicking it, and you will get the default script template as below.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;

public class SceneChanger : MonoBehaviour
{
    // Start is called before the first frame update
    void Start(){

    }

    // Update is called once per frame
    void Update()
    {

    }
}

• Add the SceneManagement library of Unity Engine and create a public function named ChangeScene which takes in the parameter sceneName.

using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using UnityEngine;
using UnityEngine.SceneManagement;

public class SceneChanger : MonoBehaviour
{
    public void ChangeScene(string sceneName)
    {
        SceneManager.LoadScene(sceneName);
    }
}

In this code, we have added the using UnityEngine.SceneManagement library, which has allowed us to use the SceneManager class.

The function ChangeScene(string sceneName) takes a string parameter named sceneName. This is then passed into the SceneManager.LoadScene() function. This function loads the new scene defined by its name.

Creating a SceneChanger GameObject

• Create a GameObject by right-clicking on the Hierarchy tab and select Create Empty and rename it to SceneChanger. This will create a new empty GameObject called SceneChanger in the scene.
• Select the SceneChanger object and drag and drop the SceneChanger script in the Inspector panel, or you can click the Add Component button in the Inspector panel and search for Scene Changer.

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Creating a Text Field and a UI Button

So far, we have created a scene changer script which will be used to change the scene in the project.

• Create a UI text to help visualise which scene we are currently on.
• Right-click on the Hierarchy and Select UI > Text - TextMeshPro.

• This will create a text field inside a canvas. Select the newly created text object and position the TextField to (0,0) in the Rect Transform which will move the text to the centre of the screen.
• You can now change the text in the TextMeshPro component to This is scene 1.

• Now, save the scene and open Scene 2 inside the Scenes folder. Create a new UI text in there, and make the TextField text into This is Scene 2.
• Next, reopen the previous scene (Scene 1) and create a UI button by right-clicking the Hierarchy and selecting UI > Button - TextMeshPro.
• This will create a button object inside the canvas. You can change the text inside the dropdown button beside the button object and select the Text(TMP) object. Change the text to ChangeScene in the TextMeshPro component.

• Select the Button object from the Hierarchy, and press the + icon below OnClick() section in the Button component. This will give you a field to assign scripts and the function to execute when the button is pressed.
• Drag and drop the SceneChanger GameObject into the field and assign the SceneChanger > ChangeScene function into the dropdown field, as shown below.

• Ensure that both scenes are added in the build setting of your project. If not, the console will throw errors because it cannot find the scene in the project.

• Run the game and click the button you created. Voila, you just loaded another scene using the SceneManagement library in Unity.

If you followed along correctly, then you will see the scene change from Scene 1 to Scene 2. You can adjust the scene and script to your liking. Creating a Scene Manager in Unity Engine greatly enhances your game development workflow. It allows you to seamlessly change scenes, organise different parts or levels, and easily load/unload scenes.

Thank you for reading. I hope this simple Scene Manager system was helpful and easy to follow along. If you want more advanced system, then consider subscribing and leaving a comment down below.