How to make a Save & Load System in Unity

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks for watching! 🙂See below for some important info regarding this tutorial. ⬇ ==1. WebGL games will not work right out of the box with this tutorial== In a WebGL game, you don't have direct access to the computers file system and therefore won't be able to save like we do in this tutorial. To properly handle data for a WebGL game using this system, you'll need to write a 'WebGL Data Handler' to save your data to a WebGL compatible data storage instead of a file system. This is essentially the 'Cloud Data Handler' I briefly refer to in this video when talking about how the system will work. Unfortunately, I'm not knowledgeable enough on WebGL myself to be able to recommend an alternate way of storage; however, most cloud-based storage systems should work. ==2. Does this work on Android?== The short answer is - yes with some considerations. I haven't tried this on Android myself; however, I have heard of several others that have gotten it working. In certain mobile versions, OnApplicationQuit() is not guaranteed to be called in the Unity lifecycle. Therefore, you may want to additionally save the game in OnApplicationPause(). Below are a couple of threads that dig into this issue in a bit more detail. Stack Overflow - stackoverflow.com/questions/64140744/unity-onapplicationquit-doesnt-work-on-android-all-the-time Unity Forum - answers.unity.com/questions/824790/help-with-onapplicationquit-android.html In addition to the above, there have been claims that Application.persistentDataPath is a bit finicky on Android. Details on this are a bit long to list here; however, there is a great FAQ post on my Discord server with information regarding this issue and some solutions for it. ==3. Ref Keyword is not needed-== As some have pointed out in the comments, you do *_NOT_* need to use the *_ref_* keyword (7:22 in the video) at all. By default in C#, non-primitive types are automatically passed by reference and for what we're doing the _ref_ keyword is not needed. It can actually make the GameData object a bit more vulnerable than we need it to be and I would recommend removing the _ref_ keyword. This was a misunderstanding I had about how C# passes by reference. My apologies to anyone this inconveniences or confuses. Thank you to those who pointed this out! I also address this in a bug fixes video which can be found here - kzbin.info/www/bejne/r4W6gZafoqaXrLs (see the "Removing the 'ref' keyword" timestamp) ==4. Other FAQ regarding this tutorial== I have other FAQ's regarding this video and the entire Save & Load System series on my Discord that can be found here. ➔ 📱discord.gg/99gcnaHFf9

[@fuzikun_]

Sir it doenst work in 3d

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

@@fuzikun_ Hey there! It should work fine for 3D. I believe others have implemented this into their 3D games successfully. Each project is going to have it's own quirks though. I'm happy to help as I can, but you'll need to provide me with details for what's not working. I also encourage you to double check your code against the Github project that can be found here, as it's easy to make mistakes when following along to a video - github.com/trevermock/save-load-system/tree/2-save-load-implemented

[@BrianLindahl]

Your the best Trevor! Thanks for the feedback and further direction. I will check out the suggested materials as well as check out that discord channel. Best wishes!

[@TinyGamesStudio]

Does this method work on android build?

[@bluejay7071]

I'm not sure if you'll see this, but do you have a better example of calling a new game? I tried doing it in the same way that your video shows but I loads the game with the data values that it left off with

[@clavesi]

this man single handedly makes some of the best tutorials out there

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks for the kind words! I'm glad you think so! 😁

[@BasVossen]

best I've seen so far.

[@FurbyOfDeth]

​@TreverMock been a full year and still nobody has topped this! Trust ne i just watched like 4 of them and this was by far the best

[@Vexurayr]

Do you understand how great this tutorial is? I'm going to college for game development and this video was leagues above the "teaching" some of my professors manage. Clear voice, understandable naming convention, comments... Now that deserves a like and sub. 👍

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much for the kind words! 🙂 That means a lot and I'm really glad you found the video helpful!

[@juanferrer5924]

I don't disagree but what i think every student should know is that you're not really going to college to learn in most degree fields, the degree is what's important. It basically proves that you had the consistency and discipline to graduate from a four year school, which a surprising amount of people can't do. It also, or should at least, as mine did, helps to put together a structured portfolio and get connections throughout the industry through fellow students and teachers alike. I'm saying this because I know a lot of people who didn't make any connections or really bother in college, just doing the minimum with the concept that they'd learn more from youtube than class. Those people ended up with bad websites and poorly structured portfolios, and little to no people willing to act as references or connection for them. I was rejected for a studio job but then a previous professor was able to find an "in" for me at that studio (many studios require a ridiculous amount of experience for an entry level position so often connections are your best shot to start with) and got me the job because i'd impressed him with my work and earned a high opinion from him. Sorry if I'm out of line, just that I've seen way too many people fall into the "college doesn't matter, I can learn from youtube" trap

[@Vexurayr]

@@juanferrer5924 I get it, and in all fairness, some of my professors were absolutely remarkable. And while I could've learned most of the same crap on KZbin, I would have never developed any connections. Your timing is eerie, too. I graduated recently and the job openings just aren't there for rookies. Now I'm applying to work as an Amazon delivery driver. I'm hoping in the future I can turn my business, Next Patch Studios LLC, into that first stepping stone for people like me just leaving college.

[@joshfatal]

@@juanferrer5924 Juan's commentary is pretty spot-on and sums up what a scam college is (or at least feels like to those of us who don't succeed at it.) You're paying exorbitant amounts of money for a piece of paper, and along the way you have to endure the often-mediocre teachings of college professors who themselves didn't have what it takes for that field. Employers see your degree and that tells them you have the discipline to endure four years of gosh-damned nonsense. It also shows them that you're probably in a lot of debt and desperate for any rate of pay to start paying your loans off, and that gives them more leverage in negotiating a salary. Having a polished portfolio is where it's at, or at least, that's what I'm hoping.

[@squarerootof2]

@@joshfatal Lol, good summary! That goes for all fields.

[@EverythingWright]

So far in my game development journey, save systems I have almost given up on since all tutorials I go through to learn it end up in errors everywhere or the save system being unreliable in the long run. This tutorial as been THE FIRST to land me in a position to not only save efficiently, but securely as well. Thank you for helping me implement a solid system for my game.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Right on! Thank you so much for the kind words and I'm really glad to hear the tutorial helped! 🙂

[@rofkec]

My man just showed how coding can be beautiful like an art form! I'm a junior solo dev learning Unity + C# and I was just blown away by how well-explained and clear everything was, even though there's so much to unpack here! THANKS

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks so much for the kind words! I'm really glad to hear the tutorial helped!

[@Gilletart]

I followed this tutorial religiously for 3 days trying to get this to work without changing any part of my game. I've only been coding for about a month but after my 50th re-watch i made it through!!! For such a complex system, you really do break it down and make it easy to follow. THANK YOU

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Awesome job! A system like this is really tough to implement into a specific game, even with a tutorial. Props to you for making it through and thank you so much for the kind words! 🙂

[@nolamo1496]

Thank you for actually making a tutorial on a properly structured system. I've been looking far and wide for something like this.

[@xxhungover]

I hold my breath until this tutorial ends. This tutorial is simply breathtaking. Thank you.

[@Robbi263]

I think this is the best tutorial I've ever seen on KZbin on any subject. I was absolutely hyped away when I watched it because I couldn't stop being blown away by how cleverly everything is explained and how it all fits together so beautifully. I learned so much about C# and Unity from this one video. Very well done and thank you so much!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much for the kind words - this made my day! 🙂 I'm really glad you found the tutorial helpful!

[@Dexi]

This is by far the best video I have seen for unity save & loads. Not just by content, but by the way you deliver it.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks so much! That means a lot and I'm really glad to hear that! 🙂

[@baileybots8206]

spent two days trying to get my save/load game to work. Watched this video and had it working in less than an hour! Thank you!

[@gideonsmith2957]

Straight up best tutorials out there imo. The way you structure the intro with showing uml snip relations is really great.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much for the kind words! I'm really glad to hear you like that format! 🙂

[@doriantermini]

Fantastic tutorial. Just before this, I had no idea how to even start with saving and loading. Now I feel as though I have unlimited power.

[@adhdcory]

For future reference, there is a type I found that works exactly like a Dictionary, and it is called SerializedDictionary. You can save this through JSONUtility the same way you would imagine for a regular dictionary. Dictionary RegularDictionary = new(); is the same as SerializedDictionary NotRegularDictionary = new();

[@SebastianGraves]

Bro, thank you very much for that little show case on saving Dictionaries to Json. Bless you!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

No problem! I'm really glad to hear that! 🙂

[@facelessanon]

This is my favorite method to store data now. Brackeys' tutorial was decent, but too basic and uses BinaryFormatter. This one not only explains things well that even an intermediate coder can understand, but the interface-saving method is just 999 IQ. 600th comment btw

[@SaikyoEdits_]

Give this man an award for this tutorial

[@rollogamerz635]

Honestly once explained it's fairly intuitive. Thank you for breaking it down so nicely for us newbies! Can't wait to play with the full version

[@MattMarkYT]

It's my first time creating a game. It took me some time to get it since I wanted to save and load in a few different scenes but I finally got it working!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!

[@catpyjamas]

One improvement you might consider is using an event to trigger saving. Since you already have the data persistent manager as a singleton, everyone can talk to it directly. You can cut the middle man with the interfaces and getting objects of type, and just trigger the event. So it would look something like this: Inside the manager class: public event Action onSaveTriggered; And then in the SaveGame method, all you have to do is: onSaveTriggered?.Invoke(this.gameData); Then basically any class that needs to access the game data implements a function: OnGameSaved(GameData data) {} And then it subs it to the above: Start() { DataPersistenceManager.instance.onSaveTriggered += OnGameSaved; } OnDestroy() { DataPersistenceManager.instance.onSaveTriggered -= OnGameSaved; } And you do the same thing for loading the game. You pass the loaded game data, and all the classes that are subscribed can open it up and get what they want from it. But yeah I get why you'd do it the way you did for a tutorial, since the above might be considered a tiny bit more advanced and you enter the world of events... although they are super useful for games, since so many things in games depend on events that happen in the game world.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Absolutely! Events are a great way to go and thank you for sharing the details for your approach. I'm sure this will help some others who want to go the event driven route! 🙂

[@Teslamodely2024]

Have you got an example on github or something? I am struggeling with this for days now!

[@abdou2247]

This by far one of the best Unity tutorials i’ve ever seen! The step by step, detailed explanation is very well done and clear! Subscripting right now!

[@The_Crucifix]

Thank you so much for the video! I got it working and it's perfect for my metroidvania.

[@SunYesGAGA]

Please keep making these great videos!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

I plan on it! 😁Thank you so much for the kind words and for the donation - that means a lot!

[@Hairclone]

Hands down one of the best tutorials I've ever watched!

[@Wobaz]

One of the best tutorial i've seen! I knew nothing about dictionary and JSON before that and was able to understand and make it work! Great work!

[@CraftyToons]

This is honestly one of the best tutorials I ever watched. Everything is explained super well and I love how you broke down how each component would be working with each other at the beginning of the video. I also super appreciate you uploading your code to a github. That helps a lot haha. As someone who is new to game dev for my senior project, it's amazing how something as complex as save and load systems I was able to implement in about 30 min. Thank you so much again and good luck with everything you are doing.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much for the kind words and good luck to you as well!! 😁

[@cryptorcd9352]

Holy! This is the best save tutorial I seen! Good job man, can't wait to watch rest of your videos and learn from them!

[@luluskuy]

thanks for making this video! I already watch a bunch of video about save and load system in KZbin, and by far it is the clearest tutorial out there!

[@ni3cat]

I was searching for proper design for game data saving. This is the best.

[@TheSxW]

9:21 - you can easly do dftype().ToList() to return new list of objects without creating it in code and making code shorter

[@maDU59_]

That is an AWESOME tutorial! (and the best part is that the codes actually works!) Thanks a lot!

[@BenBonk]

Holy cow Trever, you're a life saver. Thanks so much for the tutorial. Also your voice is so nice to listen to 😅

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Haha thank you so much for the kind words! 🙂 Really glad you found the tutorial helpful!

[@Kiosk_134]

omg benbonk on a trever mock tutorial

[@janikcodes]

Incredible video. Using interfaces like this is definitely a good and scaleable way. Also really cool thing with the GUID I didn't know. So far I've build my own custom GUID generator but this is much more useful. Also THANK YOU for not using BinaryFormatter, every old tutorial about a save & load feature uses is, even new tutorials so very good that you show a different approach on encryption.

[@ab-uo6rd]

what a great video. Fast, straight to the point, well structured but still at a pace where the viewer can follow and understand whats going on. Also very clean and easy to follow code. Great job mate and thank you so much!

[@MasterofLupanars]

Ah, for a JS->C# switcher it's just amazing. Can easily work with node js server now, thanks. So glad I don't have to write it by my own.

[@dong8912]

Nice and thorough tutorial. One thing I did differently was to use a scriptable object to store my persistent data rather than using a singleton. Still works!

[@pokebytes]

I rarely comment but man this is exactly what i needed and now I don't have to figure it out from the scratch. Thanks!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

You're welcome! I'm really glad you found it to be helpful! 🙂

[@boliviaplay7838]

I can't believe literally no one is talking about how satisfying Nice tutorials voice softs.

[@ksalarang]

This is the right way to do tutorials. Well done

[@evanarey8374]

Hey I’m stuck here 16:01 because the file is not popping up. I don’t know if I did something wrong(I probably did) but I use the same windows. Any help would be much appreciated.

[@sunubabu7813]

Seems really simple and straight forward. Will be using this in my next game

[@ABnormalZUCHINI]

Your channel is super underrated. SO happy to have stumbled across it. I hope you continue to grow!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much! 🙂I really appreciate the kind words and I'm glad you found this helpful!

[@__--_--_-----]

Amazing, efficient, modular. Great work, leaving a comment for the algorithm.

[@WallCriminal]

amazing tutorial really helped even after 2 years :D

[@nonoun9619]

Im only half way through but boy have i learnt alot from this video. You are an amazing teacher, thank you so much!!

[@StarshipJais]

+1 👍 Thank you for this series! I just Wishlisted Path of Ren, I will buy it when you release as a way to pay it back. Godspeed my dude ~

[@slayerds5300]

This is the best tutorial for sure. I'll go build some levels for the casual game

[@Shahmuradov]

So underrated channel! Keep up the good work and thanks for the tutorials!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks so much for the kind words! It's much appreciated and I'm glad you've found the tutorials helpful! 🙂

[@raphaellaboure1797]

Very good and clear tutorial on the topic with cool follow-up (about android and stuff), thanks a lot :)

[@attoblaze3395]

Thanks a ton! I modified this system a bit and it works perfectly! Great tutorial

[@goldbarth]

As written in the comments before, this system is more reliable and versatile than what you can find out there (and in the university i´m going). This is Awesome. Thank you so much💪✌

[@mitchellmacpherson4052]

Dude, honestly you're my hero right now!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!!

[@NadirGh]

Awesome to find rising new diligent creators! Keep it up good sir.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much for the kind words! That means a lot and I'll do my best! 🙂

[@invertedscreen3920]

Thank you for the explanation i was pulling out my hair trying to figure out a save system for my game !!! :) ty bud

[@simarte616]

OMG!! That is the best tutorial on youtube thanks you so much for this video I hope you will continue making video.

[@sirhotbay4708]

You are the best Trever! I do appreciate all your videos and specially your kind help on your discord channel for my specific coding issues. I must say that many youtube instructors are hiding some tricky points on the tutorials. what I love on your tutorials YOU ARE HONOST! keep it man. Thank you.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Right on! Thank you so much for the kind words - that means a lot! 🙂

[@heimdalhersir]

Hey man! amazing tutorial, thanks for this great video. Keep it up!

[@hotdogitsfriday]

Thank you very much for this tutorial. It helped me understand serialization and the JSON format.

[@levelheaded447]

This is a really great and helpful resource. Thanks so much!

[@sirgwindortvinuel]

FINALLY I FOUND IT! i found a tutorial that is good and does not use the Binary format Thanks so much man. Keep it up!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks for the kind words! Really glad you found the video to be useful! 🙂

[@sultanrahil3380]

Amazing video. Good job!!!

[@joao_cristovao]

Perfect tutorial! Best solution I could find and very well presented

[@davydovua]

The [ISerializableCallbackReceiver] dictionary is also very useful as it allows to edit the dictionary in the Unity editor screen

[@timtablet6998]

Absolutely loved this tutorial. The interface setup just feels like the right way to do saving in unity. Love it.

[@jazmeister]

best tutorial i've seen so far on this topic! thank you so much

[@jameslavery2958]

Loved the content presentation here. Really excellent work. Thanks for supporting the community.

[@KREAYTORE]

This tutorial is absolutely amazing. Genuinely perfect dude

[@qwaukstak9725]

This was a truly amazing tutorial. I couldn't get the dictionaries to work correctly for object activation though. So instead, I found I was able to use a list to achieve this the same way where instead of a GUID code I could use id as an index for the list.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you for the kind words - I'm glad you found the tutorial helpful! 🙂

[@girigiri-oy3lx]

man I missed this kind of tutorials lol. Great work here, thanks!!!

[@tukyogames]

Dude holy shit this tutorial is utterly amazing

[@B4NTO]

Really cool and useful tutorial. Not sure how useful this setup would be for a more advanced game where a lot of the things is highly dynamic. A game im working on im currently implementing some save systems but there are so many things that can change like trees being chopped down, rocks mined, crops planted, trees planted etc. I love how your system is setup here so gonna research it further someday soon

[@mv5220]

Insane well structured Tutorial. Love the Format of this Video!

[@D-zg9py]

your tutorial is perfect, thank you so much! Subscribed!

[@hiepuc6315]

Thank you for your tutorial video, this is the video I have been searching for a long time, both detailed and comprehensive with easy-to-understand instructions. I hope that you will create more tutorial videos in the future. Sincerely, thank you.

[@AskAgainLater]

Thank you for making such a detailed video, really enjoyed the Design segment, just a well made video overall.

[@danio583]

thanks you bro. you helped me so mush, your tuto are really great and easy to understand for a french like me😅

[@moose6459]

I ended up modifying this. I created a JsonValue class which stores an entire json file into a tree like data structure. That way I can pass around the jsonValue rather than a static GameData class and can dynamically add and remove data from the json file

[@matthewm2139]

Got this working perfectly in my game in less than an hour. Gracias.

[@ghost0fherobrine203]

This is probably ***THE*** best tutorial ever, and it helped me a lot, but how do you save from a script with IDataPersistence thing on it because Idk how to do that

[@NathanFrank-zz8fr]

Awesome tutorial! Keep up the great work, very easy to follow along and implement in my own project, I hope you get more subscribers!

[@_stephenhubbard]

Such a clean and well-made tutorial. Props!

[@tyshade2496]

Excellent and very helpful tutorial. You type really fast :)

[@MadaronoSensi]

This was the one to actually help and teach everything better than the others. this Tutorial was the best so far on saving on json than the others in how this was so simple but yet so understandable and it just makes everything easier. thank you brother❤ love from Egypt❤

[@cigslit]

I know nothing about programming but I have my Unity project open and my assets ready, player movemet done with complete animation, Main menu, options menu working nicely, so i will probably need to see this video 500 times, I want to make it the usual way, press a Save button and a Load button to do the intended Save/Load function, I will try to do that with this tutorial and check on what things I need to change

[@cigslit]

me clueless -> seems like you even got tutorials for that... oh you...

[@Yuhara_rev]

Holy crap this is such a fantastic tutorial. A lot of tutorials on this topic don't talk about how to save multiple objects' state (I needed to save door states in my game), and while I kind of figured out to use unique id for each object, I didn't know there is a way to generate them automatically. You also covered how to make dictionary serializable and talked about the BinaryFormatter issue. One thing I changed on my code is I have a script to check all saveable objects with id just to make sure they're all unique. The guid generation system looks like it's bound to human error when duplicating the objects. Other than that, great video! It's very helpful. Thank you so much for making it.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thank you so much for the kind words - that all means a lot and I'm really glad you found those sections helpful! 🙂 Your script to check all saveable objects for uniqueness sounds like a great addition as well!

[@Mishaboy2010]

Thanks!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

You're welcome! Thank you so much for the donation, that means a lot!

[@danixadem]

That's a tutorial very well put together. Looking forward for more like this one mate.

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks so much! I'm really glad you thought so! 🙂

[@x8c8rdev]

Thank you, this is very useful, I hope to use it in my project. Keep making more great videos!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

I'm really glad to hear and thank you so much for the kind words! 🙂

[@Somewhere_sometime_somehow]

Awesome Trever! You really did it!

[@ShapedByRainStudios]

Thanks! I told you I would! 🙂

[@moonzhild]

this is the best one i've seen, thanks for this man!

[@ivankorchmit6893]

For serializing dictionaries, I would use the serialized struct for key/value pairs which is better approach at all aspects. Great video, by the way!

[@hanerez]

You are the best!!! 💗

[@mambo2326]

Thank you so much! Great tutorial

[@ahmedakashphotography9161]

firstly I would like to wish you well and to say a huge thank you for uploading these videos as they have been an invaluable resource to

[@bigbird180]

oh my god you just saved me weeks worth of time, you beautiful bastard .

[@Fokaz_]

Thank you for this! Really clean architecture and code, very good tutorial overlal

[@SSibi]

My man's dedication is over the top!

[@marisardo]

Awesome tutorial!!! Just subscribed myself in the channel!

[@AndrewGiacomoPinnical]

This was so so useful! Thank you so much for making it!

[@itsmidge]

Super useful, exactly what I was looking for. Thank you!