Hi,
I would like to know for my case which would be a single player offline game, are there any other ways other to save game data other than PlayerPrefs, XML Serialization and the built-in Binary Serialization? I would not be touching on the server side as my game wouldn’t require access to the internet.
The data I’m talking about is just like a RPG game where every character has its own dynamic attributes like health, skills, weapons and cooldown time ( just to name a few ) that changes in run time whenever the player upgrades the character. PlayerPrefs is definitely out of the context, as it wouldn’t fit the bill since I’m talking about at least 500 dynamic attributes that has to be saved in the mobile device and stability would be an issue. And since I’m not developing for webplayer, I won’t be using servers to store the data.
For now, it seems that I could only use either the built-in Mono’s Binary Formatter Serialization or the XML Serialization. I’ve heard about Mono’s Binary Serialization having issues with iOS giving JIT Compile Error message as iOS compiles in AOT (Ahead Of Time). Further findings brought me to this that solves the error by attaching another script in the Awake(). My question is, has anyone tried this before? Will it be stable for mobile platform?
XML Serialization is another method in my head now. I’m not particularly familiar with XML, but if the Mono’s Binary Serialization isn’t stable with iOS and other mobile platforms, I would have to look at XML although as far as I know, it doesn’t have the ability to be formatted into binary. This is a quite a trouble as there’s going to be a loophole for players to edit the data. Although binaries won’t completely safeguard the data from being edited, at least it’s a preventive wall for average-Joes to break into.
So, to repeat my question again, are there any other recommended ways for persistent storage in mobile platform other than PlayerPrefs, Binary Serialization and XML Serialization? My game would be targeted for iOS and Android devices.
Thanks!