Gameplay Tags are user-defined labels given to gameplay objects. These labels allow you to define sets of objects e.g., player, respawn, and enemy to identify and manipulate using scripts. This new tag type expands on the current functionality of tags - removing existing pain points - and aligns more closely with industry standards. To learn more about possible use-cases for tags and understand how tags are used in game development, visit the Unity and Unreal documentation on tags. With this update, your entities will automatically migrate to the new field type: “gameplayTags” and be ready for use in scripts.
Gameplay Tags allow you to:
Assign multiple tags to a single entity (up to 5 tags with a max of 20 characters per tag)
Manipulate tags using TypeScript e.g. add, remove, set, and compare
Search with Typescript using AND|OR to find entities with specific tags or sets of tags on a “World” level
Assign tags to triggers and raycasts
Filter entities by tags in Desktop Editor
For more information on the Gameplay Tags API and to see example code, see the API reference doc.
Using Gameplay Tags in Desktop Editor and VR
Since this feature involves multiple moving parts, below are a few different scenarios for modifying and manipulating gameplay tags in Desktop Editor and Build Mode in Meta Horizon Worlds.
To quickly navigate to a specific editing workflow, use the following links:
Tag Filtering (Desktop#tag-filtering-in-desktop-editor)
Tag Editing in Desktop Editor
Using Desktop Editor, you can search for, add, remove, and modify gameplay tags.
Search for a tag
Navigate to the right-most menu and find the “Gameplay Tags” section
Enter the keyword in the search bar and press enter
Any entities with this tag should appear
Add a tag
Select the object
Navigate to the right-most menu and find the “Gameplay Tags” section
Select the “+” symbol next to the search bar
Enter tag name into field and press enter
The tag will now appear under the object’s tags
Remove a tag
Repeat steps 1 and 2 from “Add a tag”
Navigate to the desired tag to remove and click on the “-” icon
The tag will be removed from the object’s tags
Modify a tag
Repeat steps 1 and 2 from “Add a tag”
Navigate to the desired tag to modify and click on the pencil icon
Enter the new tag name or modifications
Click enter and the tag will update
Tag Editing in VR
Adding, removing, and modifying tags in VR is a similar process to that of Desktop Editor. The following video shows where to find tags (under Attributes in a game object’s menu) and how to remove, add, and modify them.
Tag Filtering in Desktop Editor
In the “Hierarchy” menu of Desktop Editor, you’re able to filter entities by their associated tags. To do so, click on the filter icon and select the appropriate tag and watch the list re-populate with only the entities using that tag.
Known Issues
Due to limitations on world builder that do not allow for collection types on Entity fields, tags are stored as a JSON serialized string. To counteract the performance implications of serialization, we’ve introduced a service that caches tags in a readily available set to perform any matching operation on an Entity’s tags.
