Serialization creates file while returning nothing

Questions & Answers
1

I’m trying to achieve a persistent leader scoreboard with the help of serialization. At first I kept close to the Unity tutorial, but had to wander off after a while to actually make those functions work to my liking and for my purpose.

Here are the scripts
loadHighscore.cs

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;
using System.IO;

public class loadHighScore : MonoBehaviour {

   
    int highScoreFinal;
    string playerName;

    public PlayerData playerData;

    void Start () {

        LoadFromFile();
        //print(playerData.playerName);
        //print(playerData.playerScore);

        //Debug.Log(playerData.playerName.ToString());
        //Debug.Log(playerData.playerScore.ToString());
    }


    public void LoadFromFile()
    {
        if (File.Exists(Application.persistentDataPath + "/highScore.dat"))
        {
            BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
            FileStream file = File.Open(Application.persistentDataPath + "/highScore.dat", FileMode.Open);
            PlayerData data = (PlayerData)bf.Deserialize(file);

            file.Close();

            playerName = data.playerName;
            highScoreFinal = data.playerScore;          
        }
    }
}

highScoreCounter.cs

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System;
using System.Runtime.Serialization.Formatters.Binary;
using System.IO;

public class highscoreCounter : MonoBehaviour
{

    public static highscoreCounter control;
    
    int highScoreFinal;
    string playerName;    

    
    void Update()
    {
        highScoreFinal = GetComponent<highscoreCalculator>().highScoreFinal;
        playerName = GameObject.Find("LevelFinisher").GetComponent<finishLevel>().newPlayerName;        
    }
    public void SaveToFile()
    {
        BinaryFormatter bf = new BinaryFormatter();
        FileStream file = File.Create(Application.persistentDataPath + "/highScore.dat");

        PlayerData data = new PlayerData();
        data.playerName = playerName;
        data.playerScore = highScoreFinal;

        bf.Serialize(file, data);
        file.Close();
    }
}

PlayerData.cs

using UnityEngine;
using System.Collections;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System;

[Serializable]
public class PlayerData
{
    public string playerName;
    public int playerScore;
}

public class PlayerDatabase
{
    public List<PlayerData> list = new List<PlayerData>();
}

So, what is going on:
I am having troubles filling the *.dat file. What happens is that as soon as the game ends and I enter my string as well as my highscore, it’s fed into the file and saved. The file continually grows bigger.

When I try to load the values to check if they are actually saved, it will return me null for the strings, and 0 for the integers.
I cannot tell whats going on, and I would really appreciate any tips.

ps: Yes, I could make this into saving a xml to check, or use PlayerPrefs, but I really want to learn how to work with serialization…

Thanks!

2

Uhm i guess

data.playerName = playerName;
data.highScoreFinal = highScoreFinal;

inside LoadFromFile should be the other way round:

playerName = data.playerName;
highScoreFinal = data.highScoreFinal;

Your code loads the data object from the file and then overwrites it’s values with the values in your script.

3

You shouldn’t call SaveToFile in Update , call it just once, just after you set the values of highScoreFinal and playerName.

Oh god, yeah thanks! But the load
function now only shows me the last
entries, not all from the file.

Your code save only one user and overwrite it at each save if I understand correctly. You should make a list and add users to it and then save the list.