Serialization in Unity

Question

So to put it as briefly as possible, I am trying to save my character's essential information, and not only have I heard PlayerPrefs is ill-advised, but it also won't work right for some of the information I have (for instance, I can't PlayerPrefs my Profession and its accompanying stats and inherited class info), so I've pretty much assumed the best, if not only way, to accomplish this is through Serialization.

Now, I am pretty positive I understand Serialization in a core way, but I wouldn't claim that I know it very intimately, and thus, I'm in a bit of a bind.

I have quite a few scripts written, and here's the gist for them. Note: My scripts very well may be a mess, but if that's so, please tell me. I don't claim that they're great, only that I have a lot there, and AFAIK, they're all alright, it's just doing the Serializing that is difficult for me for whatever reason.

Slight description of them: I am simply trying to make a character script for a Guard that will take both the Job: Mercenary, as well as the Type: GuardPrototype, and then, I want to be able to save that. In theory, the GameControl.cs script would accomplish that, but I'm having troubles (obviously), and I have a bunch of things commented out because I am fairly clueless, lol.

So, that said, I did do the Persistence and Saving tutorial from Unity, but I'm not only using/calling different scripts, I'm not handling simple floats, so I've had a hard time modifying that. Ultimately, I just want to know two things: Is my code that I am trying to save sensible? If it is, then how on earth would I use Serialization to save the info?

Thanks in advance, I appreciate any help I get.

TL;DR How in the hell does Serialization work with things that aren't simple floats, that are in separate scripts?

Notes: The following are the chains of scripts I intend to use

• ClassParadigm -> Mercenary //this is the job that gets used
• TypeParadigm //because there are multiple it could be -> StandardParadigm -> GuardPrototype //of all the standard types, it is of a guard

Then, I want to have a script call them. - Character (in this case, GuardA), which will then take a job, and a type (both established above), as well as StandardPlayerParadigm //What a standard player will possess

Finally, this is all supposed to be placed on an object in Unity, which I could then make a prefab of. So, in other words, if this were a character in my game, whenever that prefab was on the field, it'd be a GuardPrototype + Mercenary.

Edit: Thanks to Mike Hunt because they definitely assisted me big time with the main problem at hand. I now have a slightly different issue, but this seems MUCH more feasible.

Firstly, I updated my gist. Secondly, I am having a thing in Unity where, when I attach the XMLSerialization script to a gameObject, it has some child profiles in it (like a nested menu that I don't want it to have). I'm not quite sure how to combat that, and what's more it certainly doesn't seem like it's actually assigning the values I want it to have due to that (As in I want the GuardA script to have assigned stats from its "type" script I wrote, but I don't think it's working). I'm positive I just did something a bit excessive and somewhere in my code it made it call something extra, but I can't for the life of me figure out where that would've been.

So two questions now: A) What is going on with that? B) Is this an effective use? Did I not quite implement this as intended?

Also, third question: This seems like an impeccable method for having duplicate enemies with minor variance in stats, but what exactly would I need to do to just save my standard player? Seems like it's still not quite hitting the mark for that, but I could be wrong and just not realize it.

Answer 1

If you want to use binary serialization that'll be the best to implement ISerializable.

You need provide 2 items:

1. Method for serialization, that will guide serializer 'what' and 'how' to save:

    void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info,
        StreamingContext context)
   

2. Custom constructor. The ISerializable interface implies a constructor with the signature constructor

   (SerializationInfo information, StreamingContext context)
   

And if you need another example article Object serizalization.

But for the game I would suggest to look at some custom Xml based serizaliser, so you don't need to write directions for binary serizaliation on every class change, and only properties needed. Ofc there might be some troubles with properties in Unity :(.

Answer 2

Create a class that will store the info to save and decorate it of the Serializable attribute:

[Serializable]
public class Storage{
    public string name;
    public int score;
}

When you want to save data, create an instance of this class, populate it, use .NET serialization and save with PlayerPrefs:

// Create
Storage storage = new Storage();
// Populate
storage.name = "Geoff";
storage.score = 10000;
// .NET serialization 
BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
bf.Serialize(ms, items as Storage);
// use PlayerPrefs
PlayerPrefs.SetString("data", Convert.ToBase64String(ms.GetBuffer()));

You can retrieve with the invert process:

if (PlayerPrefs.HasKey("data") == false) { return null; }
string str = PlayerPrefs.GetString("data");
BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(str));
Storage storage =  bf.Deserialize(ms) as Storage;

I would suggest to convert that into a generic method so you can use any type with any key:

public static class Save 
{
    public static void SaveData<T>(string key, object value) where T : class
    {
        BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream();
        bf.Serialize(ms, value as T);
        PlayerPrefs.SetString(key, Convert.ToBase64String(ms.GetBuffer()));
    }

    public static T GetData<T>(string key) where T: class
    {
        if (PlayerPrefs.HasKey(key) == false) { return null; }
        string str = PlayerPrefs.GetString(key);
        BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
        MemoryStream ms = new MemoryStream(Convert.FromBase64String(str));
        return bf.Deserialize(ms) as T;
    }
}