Storing game's user data

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-07 17:28:14
User: CalvinMT [] (age: 1451 days 🔥; posts: 114)}
Hi!
I was wondering if there was a way to load and save the game's user data or if we've got to do it ourselves. Not that it bothers me, ahah!
I took a look at the documentation and saw that Resources could get Strings. Could that be it?
I also looked in Game, Game.info(), Game.world() and some others but didn't find anything.

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-07 20:03:29
User: nightm4re [Admin 👑, Mod 🔧] (age: 1567 days 🔥; posts: 185)}
Hey there, what kind of user data do you mean exactly? A savegame system?

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-07 20:31:53
User: CalvinMT [] (age: 1451 days 🔥; posts: 114)}
nightm4re
Yeah, exactly!
Edit:
To be more precise, like a file that would hold the user's achievements through a game before exiting. It could be which levels he succeded or not, items stored in inventory, and so on... Otherwise, you know better than me, data gets lost.

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-10 21:01:48
User: nightm4re [Admin 👑, Mod 🔧] (age: 1567 days 🔥; posts: 185)}
I understand your effort ;) There is currently no standard way in LITIengine to save the player progress.
You could have a look at ~~~~XmlUtilities.save() to save any ~~**~~JAXB** annotated object into an xml file. However, you'll have to create that save file class yourself. :(
Edit:
Of Course, wel'll gladly help you if you run into any problems :)

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-10 22:41:16
User: CalvinMT [] (age: 1451 days 🔥; posts: 114)}
nightm4re
Thank you for the information!
I obviously don't mind creating and handling save files myself. I just want to try to fully use the utiLITI engine.
It now gets me to wonder what Strings in Resources are used for...? Care to give a hint?

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-10 23:21:03
User: nightm4re [Admin 👑, Mod 🔧] (age: 1567 days 🔥; posts: 185)}
CalvinMT Our most frequent use for String resources has been localization. Using ~~Resources.strings().get("myTerriblyNamedString") will, for example, check your project's resource folders for text files named **"strings_de_DE.properties"** or **"strings_en_US.properties"** (or any other strings.properties file) and look up any key **~~"myTerriblyNamedString"**. Depending on the locale you have currently set on your game, the key will be looked up in the currently set locale's table and the respective value in your desired language will be returned.
This is intended to facilitate international deployment with LITIengine.

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-10 23:50:09
User: CalvinMT [] (age: 1451 days 🔥; posts: 114)}
nightm4re
That's good to know!
Thanks!

[nightm4re94]

^{This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-11 19:35:24
User: steffen [Admin 👑, Mod 🔧] (age: 1568 days 🔥; posts: 100)}
CalvinMT I think that a general purpose save game is fairly hard to accomplish since each game has different requirements in that regard. The engine doesn't know which information you want to be persistent. Of course, it could provide something like a generic dictionary but I don't know if that would be of much help.
For our game ~~**~~DR.LEPUS**, we've created a custom class to achieve this like so:
~~```java~~@XmlRootElement(name = "savegame") public class SaveGame { @XmlElement(name = "chapter") private int chapter; @XmlElement(name = "part") private int part; @XmlElement(name = "spawn") private int spawn; @XmlElement(name = "upgrades") private UpgradeLevels upgrades; @XmlElement(name = "brains") private int brains; @XmlElement(name = "totalZombiesKilled") private int totalZombiesKilled; @XmlElement(name = "inventory") private Storage<Items> inventory; ... }```` which results in the following XML, that we store in the ~~System.getProperty("user.home") + "/.drlepus/savefiles/save-1.xml" ```xml~~

1
1
2
lepus-save

0
0

````
This is of course just one way to do things. I guess it's a general question of how you want to make your data persistent. And I believe, there's no general answer to this other than "it depends". Other games might be better off with a JSON file, an SQLite database or a plain-text file.

[nightm4re94]

<sup>This post has been migrated automatically from the old LITIENGINE forum (2018 - 2022).
Posted: 2019-03-11 22:01:32
User: CalvinMT [] (age: 1451 days 🔥; posts: 114)</sup>
steffen
Wow! Thank you very much for the example!
> steffen I think that a general purpose save game is fairly hard to accomplish since each game has different requirements in that regard.
Now that you said it and that I've given it more thought, it would be difficult to plan it out, as you say, for each different game.
But I was thinking about something like this:
newElement(string); newElement(string, value); // sets directly the value of the element setElement(string, value); getElement(string); // returns value
Where "string" would be the name of the element. And "value" would be, obviously, the value of the element.
"value", for example, would be able to handle a plain string or tables of strings, which would then be wrote down in a file handled by litiEngine in a default format.
I initially thought that that was what "Resources.strings()" did, until I saw it only had a "get()" function.