The World Designer Tool includes Addressable support by default so long as Unity's Addressables package is in your Project. If you haven't added the Addressables package to your project, navigate to the Setup Section now. Addressables are supported in two ways when using the World Designer Tool.
First, the default Addressable Prefab Chunk Streamer and Addressable Scene Chunk Streamer components have corresponding Asset Managers built into the Streamable Assets Manager. These Asset Managers control adding existing Addressable Assets to the scene for editing purpose, saving Addressable Assets, and destroying them.
Second, the Default Asset Creator contains several settings that allow for the automatic creation of new Addressable Assets while using the World Designer Tool.
The Addressable Asset Managers offer built in support for loading, manipulating, saving, and deleting Addressable Asset Chunks while using the World Designer Tool. In order to use these Asset Managers, it is necessary to add them to the Project. You may have already done this if you went through the Setup Section within this chapter, but if not, you can add these two assets by executing the following two Assets menu commands:
1) Assets - > Deep Space Labs -> SAM -> Regenerate Default Addressable Prefab Asset Manager
2) Assets - > Deep Space Labs -> SAM -> Regenerate Default Addressable Scene Asset Manager
These commands create two new Asset Manager Scriptable Assets inside of the Assets/Editor Default Resources/Deep Space Labs/SAM/AssetManagers folder.
Whenever an LOD Group using the Addressable Prefab Chunk Streamer is detected while using the World Designer tool, it will automatically find and load the Asset Manager named AddressablePrefabChunkStreamer_AssetManager within this folder, which at this time, will be the default Asset Manage you created.
It is the same for the Addressable Scene Chunk Streamer, except when an LOD Group using the Streamer is detected, the World Designer tool will try and find an Asset Manager named AddressableSceneChunkStreamer_AssetManager.
This strategy allows you to create custom Asset Managers for any existing or custom Chunk Streamers in the Streamable Assets Manager, because you can simply remove the default Asset Managers and replace them with same named custom Assets. You can find more information within the Asset Managers Section in the World Designer Tool Chapter.
--Special Note--
By default, the Asset Managers will use the default AddressableAssetSettings asset in the project, which will usually be the one auto generated by Unity when you first imported the Addressables Package. If you would like to use a different AddressableAssetSettings asset, navigate to the Asset Manager assets and assign the new settings asset to the Settings field on both Asset Managers. Remember that these Asset Manager assets can be found in the Assets/Editor Default Resources/Deep Space Labs/SAM/AssetManagers folder.
--Addressable Scene Asset Manager--
The Addressable Scene Asset Manager has a special setting called Edit Prefab Roots When Possible. Please take a look at the Asset Managers Section in the World Designer Tool Chapter for more information on this setting.
Asset Creators are responsible for creating new Asset Chunks when they are needed by the World Designer Tool. The Default Asset Creator is the only Asset Creator included by default with SAM, however you are always free to create custom Asset Creators for more advanced behavior. More information can be found within the Asset Creators Section of the World Designer Tool Chapter.
The Default Asset Creator has various settings related to Addressables that are only shown when the Addressables Package is in your Project. For whatever type of asset you are creating with the Default Asset Creator (prefabs or scenes), you can choose to make the assets Addressable, however note that for Scenes, you must disable the Add To Build Settings option in order to see the option to make scenes addressable. This is because when an addressable scene is also in the build settings, Unity will throw an exception!
The Default Asset Creator let's you choose the AddressableAssetSettings asset to use for each asset type, which defines the Groups available for the assets to be assigned to. Note that when no AddressableAssetSettings asset is assigned, the Asset Creator attempts to get the default AddressableAssetSettings asset, so in many cases assigning the same asset to the Addressable Settings field will not change the Groups shown.
You can also add literal strings to prepend and/or append to the Address for each Asset Chunk that is create (if no strings are defined, the Address will simply be the Asset Chunk's name.
Finally, you can choose Labels to assign to the assets, which can be Labels that already exist on the AddressableAssetSettings asset, or new Labels. When you add new Labels, the Labels are automatically added to the AddressableAssetSettings asset before creating Asset Chunks.
--One Final Note--
Unique Asset Creators are only needed if you need to define different settings for different LOD Groups. With Addressables, this will usually be dictated by a need for different Labels, Groups, and/or literal prepended/appended address strings.