Unity using Resources.Load in a Generic class

Question

So i have multiple data types like armorData, weaponData, itemData etc and wanted to make a generic resource load for them (they are scriptable Objects) but apperently T or system.Object is not convertable to UnityEngine.Object which is returned by the Resource.Load<>() method. So my question is, is there a way to make something like the code below work to get something like Resources.Load()

public class RessourceCollector<T>
{
    public List<T> LoadPlayerResources(SaveDataStructure savedPlayerStats, List<string> savedCollection, string folderPath)
    {
        List<T> itemResources = new List<T>();

        foreach (var armorSaveData in savedCollection)
        {
            T itemDataFromResources = LoadFromResource(folderPath, armorSaveData);
            itemResources.Add(itemDataFromResources);
        }

        return itemResources;
    }

    public T LoadFromResource(string path, string itemName)
    {
        return Resources.Load<T>(Path.Combine(path, itemName));
    }
}

I tried to use T or System. object/Object but nothing is convertable from the type UnityEngine.Object.

Answer 1

In your implementation, T can be any type, while Resources.Load() is restricted to UnityEngine.Object types only.

This means that if you specify e.g. int as your T, the conversion from UnityEngine.Object to int is not possible. Thus the error.

You simply need to apply the same restriction to your generic parameter:

public class ResourceCollector<T> where T : UnityEngine.Object

Now you can only use UnityEngine.Object and the types derived from it with ResourceCollector, so the conversion is formally guaranteed.