Troglodyte in Underbelly: Save Files

 Author: Shemaiah Nelson

Date: 3/13/2024

This week, I tackled the challenge of implementing multiple save files in our game "Troglodyte In Underbelly." The objective seemed straightforward: create a system that allows players to manage and switch between different save files to accommodate multiple playthroughs or save states. While I successfully developed functionality to create and manage these save files within the game session, I encountered significant difficulty accessing them once the game closed and was reopened. Despite my best efforts to ensure the persistence and accessibility of save data, I found that the save files were either inaccessible or overwritten upon restarting the game. This limitation severely undermined the usability and functionality of the save system, preventing players from seamlessly resuming their progress or managing multiple save states effectively.

I created 2 scripts called SaveSlots and SaveSlotMenu, you've created a user interface component that displays available save slots and allows players to interact with them. These scripts manage the visibility of save slots based on the existence of saved data files, providing a clear indication to the player of which slots contain saved progress. Additionally, I added functionality to the SaveSlotMenu script to handle player interactions, such as loading existing save data or creating a new game if no data exists. The OnClick_DeleteSave method allows players to delete specific save files, providing further flexibility and control over their saved progress. Moreover, by incorporating error handling and checks to ensure the proper initialization of data persistence objects in the LoadGame method of the DataPersistenceManager, too mitigated the risk of data corruption or loss due to uninitialized objects. I also went ahead and changed how the new game button works and created a UI section for the save files.