Search Issue Tracker

Postponed means that the issue was either a feature request or something that requires major refactoring on our side. Since that makes the issue not actionable in the close future we choose to close it as Postponed and add it on our internal roadmaps and technical debt pages instead.

Postponed

Votes

24

Found in

3.5.0f1

2018.4

2019.3

2020.1

2020.2

Issue ID

442732

Regression

No

SerializeField list objects are not initialized with class/struct default values when adding objects in the Inspector window

Serialization

-

How to reproduce:
1. Open the attached 'project-442732.zip' project
2. In the Hierarchy window select 'Test'
3. In the Inspector window set the 'Test Data' array size to 1

Expected result: new TestData object is initialized with its default values (someFloat = 30f, someBool = true, someInt = 10)
Actual result: new TestData object is initialized with default variable type values (someFloat = 0f, someBool = false, someInt = 0)

Reproducible with: 2018.4.23f1, 2019.3.15f1, 2020.1.0b10, 2020.2.0a12

  1. Resolution Note:

    When the first element is added to an array via SerializedProperty it is allocated by zeroing the memory rather than calling the constructor. And when adding additional elements it copies the previous element. We will consider changing that behavior as part of future quality improvement work in the area of SerializedObject/SerializedProperty but also wary of any possible performance and backward compatibility impact for changing this behaviour.

Log in to vote on this issue

Comments (6)

  1. a-symington

    Nov 17, 2025 06:36

    Due to this ticket being "Postponed" they probably aren't seeing comments on this, and votes might be wasted. But still...

    I can see how it might be a major refactor to fix, but it's also a major defect in a very core Unity feature because adding a new field to a serialized array in larger projects and then having to potentially check/manually override many instances because the default isn't being respected is very time-consuming and error-prone. (And this is if you even understand what happened in the first place...)

  2. SoapsudsMelon

    Sep 27, 2025 17:00

    Still present in 2022.3.61f1 as well.

  3. Waz

    Sep 15, 2025 05:54

    It's basically violating C# invariants, so there's not even the concern that it would "break existing code" - the default C# behaviour is zeroed memory, so only someone who has deliberately added a default constructor will see a change,

  4. inflict98

    Aug 07, 2025 15:30

    Any update on this ? :')

  5. Kogamma

    Feb 21, 2023 09:57

    Yeah, this is really strange behaviour, would be very good to fix this

  6. AtsusaKai

    Apr 21, 2022 13:33

    10+ years have passed... Any chance this issue gets resolved?

Add comment

Log in to post comment

All about bugs

View bugs we have successfully reproduced, and vote for the bugs you want to see fixed most urgently.

Latest issues

See all new issues