Multiple scenes can help or hinder. it sort of depends on your mindset and workflow.
You can also keep a single level in multiple scenes and open all scenes at once, positioning sub-objects to be aligned relatively correctly. This would be helpful if the target hardware can’t handle an entire level being loaded at once. You can even write tooling to dynamically chop up a large scene.
That’s just a GameManager and / or game load/save. There’s a billion different ways ranging from storing state in a static class to far more involved stuff. Do not let it slow you down. Pick something and move forward. Here’s some reading on GameManagers:
Simple Unity3D Singleton (no predefined data):
Unity3D Singleton with a Prefab (or a ScriptableObject) used for predefined data:
And some more reading on load/save:
Load/Save steps:
An excellent discussion of loading/saving in Unity3D by Xarbrough:
And another excellent set of notes and considerations by karliss_coldwild:
Loading/Saving ScriptableObjects by a proxy identifier such as name:
When loading, you can never re-create a MonoBehaviour or ScriptableObject instance directly from JSON. Save data needs to be all entirely plain C# data with no Unity objects in it.
The reason is they are hybrid C# and native engine objects, and when the JSON package calls new to make one, it cannot make the native engine portion of the object, so you end up with a defective “dead” Unity object.
Instead you must first create the MonoBehaviour using AddComponent() on a GameObject instance, or use ScriptableObject.CreateInstance() to make your SO, then use the appropriate JSON “populate object” call to fill in its public fields.
If you want to use PlayerPrefs to save your game, it’s always better to use a JSON-based wrapper such as this one I forked from a fellow named Brett M Johnson on github:
Do not use the binary formatter/serializer: it is insecure, it cannot be made secure, and it makes debugging very difficult, plus it actually will NOT prevent people from modifying your save data on their computers.
