Recreating objects from binary savefile

Unity Engine
1

Hey!

I tried to solve this problem for a while now and can’t find a proper solution and get more and more confused about the whole theory behind it.
I’ve read hundreds of different articles and forum topics about it but couldn’t find a solution.
Maybe i tackle this problem in the complete wrong way…I’m open for any suggestions!

So my problem is the following. I’ve created a binary formatting save systems which works fine.
It saves a playerData File that can be properly loaded and is persitent through scenes.

The PlayerData holds a List of CreatureData (i don’t like the comparison but yeah think about pokemon)
when entering a battle i have to recreate the Creatures from the saved Data (all saved Data is serialized)

I didn’t expect to get problems with the re-Instantiation of the Gameobjects.

A battle participant was planned to consist out of a
-prefab (A Mesh with Animations)
-CreatureTemplate (Base Informations for all creatures of that type) as scriptable object
-CreatureData (Current individual values for this specific creature) This is what is saved in the playerData file

i need this structure because every creature will have the same template but will develop individually throughout it’s levels.

I planned to use Resources.Load with a string id from the creatureData to load the referenced scriptable object asset(which again holds the prefab))
But how ever i try this i always get back a null.

So is there already a flaw in that logic? how should i try to recreate a gameobject from the data i can serialize?

I also tested the same function call with a simple cube prefab which worked…
Which leads me to the guess, that i can’t load custom ScriptableObject .asset files created with this method
http://wiki.unity3d.com/index.php?title=CreateScriptableObjectAsset

This is the exact code passage
GameObject newObject = Instantiate(Resources.Load(curPath,typeof (Object))) as GameObject;

and yes the files are located in Resources/Creatures…so i guess i got something wrong logically.

Hope i kind of made my problem clear enough.
Thanks in advance to everyone who takes this time to read and answer to this!

2

Are you making sure you are setting that string value?

My current project has a similar setup, and works great… once all the values are set correctly.

3

Thank you that already gives me some hope that i’m not totally wrong track here…might be something with the type casting.

Here’ a bit more code:

Variable Declaration

private const string templatePath = "CreatureTemplates/";

before method call

string curPath = templatePath+Player.instance.data.Team[i].ID;

which returns
Creatures/Larva for example
and should direct to my file located in
Assets/Resources/Creatures/Larva.asset
I guess the problem is somwhat in the typeof. currently im simply looking for an object adn try to cast it into a gameobject so can can use a getcomponent to get on my CreatureData…i tried to look for creaturedata in the beginning but couldnt bring that to work either… and received “cannot convert 'unityEngine.Object” to “CreatureData” via built-in conversion…so i guess this means that my custom asset is considered an Object.
i tried tons of stuff but i’m totally stuck here

4

Ah yes you are using a ScriptableObject. I’m using the prefabs directly, so its a little different.

To get it to load, I found a line of code from this forum post.

var cData = (CreatureData)Resources.Load(curPath, typeof(CreatureData));

Not sure if you need to create an instance of it after that to get the data from it, but it should work.

5

Thank you Chris for your help.

I tried your code snippet but i get the exact same error (can’t cast from Unity.Object to CreatureData)
it happens at the typeof Passage.

I’m still absolutly lost and it get’s worse and worse each day.
A friend of mine suggested to restructure it a bit and simply save a reference to the scriptable object.
I tried and failed miserably.

when i try to save a reference to my scriptable object i get a serialization error no matter how i structure it.

  • when the scriptableobject isn’t serialized i get a (serialization missing error) so i guess every object that is somehow referenced in my saveFile also has to be serializable
  • when i serialize the scriptableObject to i get a huge error message that doesn’t tell me anything
    (serialization exception type unityEngine.ScriptableObject in assembly UnityEngine is not marked as serializable)
    Brickwall for me. I have no Idea why i can’t serialize it…

So i’m back to the idea of using a string or int to find my scriptableobject reference at runtime… here is a small graph of what im trying to achieve.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1WTi87HjxTcMno0dWpnUThVbFE/view?usp=sharing

6

Solved!

I just received the right hint for something like this! In case anybody else might need this.

If you have a scriptableObject as an Asset Instance you have to use AssetDatabase.LoadAtPath and everything works like a charm. maybe i will stumble upon some further problems with this but for now atleast it seems to be working :slight_smile: