File Input best practices

Unity Engine
1

I’ve finished a game which relies on reading level data from a raw text file with a StreamReader (C#), and while this works just fine in the debugger, it simply doesn’t when I port it for Mac OSX.

This got me wondering some best practices are for ensuring compatibility and reliability when doing file I/O in C# in general.

What works for you? Why do you like it?

thanks folks :slight_smile:

2

To avoid all the platform differences, where possible I always use Unity’s asset system.

Add files to a Resource folder and have unity include them with the standard game assets. For example you could save your levels like (note, the extension is important - use .txt for text data, and .bytes for binary data):

…/Assets/Resources/level_001.txt
…/Assets/Resources/level_002.txt
…/Assets/Resources/level_003.txt

and then use something like (note, the extension must be excluded when loading):

TextAsset asset = Resources.Load ("level_001") as TextAsset;
TextAsset asset = Resources.Load ("level_002") as TextAsset;
TextAsset asset = Resources.Load ("level_003") as TextAsset;

This will work consistently on all platforms.

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3

Thanks Larku! I’ve seen some others talk about the same sort of approach… is ‘Resources’ just an arbitrary folder name, or is there something more to it than that?

4

Not arbitrary, essentially files included in any Resources folder under your Assets folder (anywhere under the Assets folder) are included with your assets at build time. So:

Assets/Resources/*
Assets/MyFunkyFolder/Resources/*
Assets/A/Deep/Folder/For/Example/Resources/*

Will all be included. See: http://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Resources.Load.html

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