Third Times the Charm: Saving and Instancing

This week, I was tasked with making gamemodes and states to keep track of the players data. These classes are great for keeping the track of multiple players in a multiplayer game, so after researching this system, I looked into ways to keep the plays persistent through not only a single play through, but any number of sessions. For this, I used Save Game to store this data on the local system for when the player would enter and exit the game and traverse levels. For the sake of our game though, it being a rogue-lite, this functionality is not exactly what we are looking for. I then moved to Game Instance, where it able to hold persistent data through out a play through, and would be cleared once the game was exited. This way I could store health and relics during a single play through, but can keep track of achievements and unlocked weapons throughout multiple playthroughs.

As I developed this functionality in this game, I got Game Saves to work initially, then ran into some issues will cleaning it up which made it not function. With that lose, I moved to Game Instances and with knowledge and practice with both, I was able to get both to work hand in hand. That was until we got to our weekly build, where I had to strip both out due to complications with integrating with other members work those last days. This oversight and poor communication on my hand has helped me realize the importance of making sure to touch base with our areas of development if you plan on integrating into their systems, because at the end of the day, the games has to work, and you can't let yourself get in the way of the teams goal. I plan on having saving, and instancing done before the end of this next week, to allow me time to flesh them out more and to keep communicating with my fellow developers on how they can integrate into this system I have created.

Side Note: I tweaked and fixed some audio bugs this week but currently having issue with some audio mixes not responding as intended. I hope to talk about this more in next weeks blog post. Thank you for keeping up with our progress and have a great day!