The limitation of BinaryReader is that you must read the information in the same order you wrote it. It’s faster and more efficient on storage than Unity’s built-in JsonUtility, which stores data in the JSON format. BinaryReader and BinaryWriterīinaryReader and BinaryWriter are tools built into dotNET that read and write binary data. Let’s explore how to save this with BinaryWriter. Also, it contains a helper function that takes an array of entities and isolates the data we need to save. Public void SetEntities(Entity entities)ĮntityUuids = new string ĮntityPositions = new Vector3 įor (int i = 0 i < entities.Length ++i)ĮntityUuids = ĮntityPositions = Īs mentioned, it holds an array of ids and one of the positions. When we save, we grab all the entities in the world and store their id with their position. Each entity has an id that links to a prefab through a ScriptableObject. So in this example, we have a game with a bunch of entities. You can find a link to the Github repository for the example project at the end of this post.

Ideally, it’s easy enough to understand, and all you have to do is extend it to support the data your project requires. I did my best to recreate a simple example that demonstrates as many principles as possible.

In one turn-based prototype I wrote, I store every entity and every tile in the world for every turn that has passed so that players can rewind to any previous turn even after quitting and loading the game. A more complicated example could be the status and id of every single entity in the world. The SaveData object is a class that contains everything we need to recreate the current game state, such as the player’s health and position and the active scene. Save DataĪs I mentioned, the save data manager will read and write a SaveData object. The fundamental architecture doesn’t change from one format to the next, so you could always extend the manager to support other backends like MessagePack or ProtoBuf. We’ll support Binary through BinaryWriter and BinaryReader and JSON through Unity’s built-in JsonUtility.

We’ll build a save data manager that’ll take a SaveData object and either write it to a file or read from an existing file.

Additionally, I’ll provide tips for structuring your save data. This article will explore saving and loading data to a binary format through BinaryWriter and BinaryReader.

Hex editor far manager open file