I wanted to ask about save files, specifically the type of file being used currently. I understand the game is super early in dev and that we start over with each new build, but I'm curious. The save files are a type that im unfamiliar with, not the usual dat or sav files from other Unity games. Do you plan on keeping save files as they stand or would you change them as the game grows?
It's kinda funny, those “formats” aren’t actually real. Since I was saving without an extension in the file name it started reading the ".3a" in the game version (0.1.3a) as a format. The game has no problem reading it since extensions mean nothing beyond telling programs how to handle the file.
Yes, I'll change the file format in the next version of the save system to avoid confusion, but this won’t make a difference to the actual content of the file beyond the file name. Both .sav and .dat aren’t universal formats, so their structure is specific to the program that created them.Unity doesn’t provide a built-in way to have game save files, so each game handles it in its own way.
If you were hoping to manually edit your save data like in some other games that use plain text files, unfortunately that wont be possible. I'm saving data in binary to keep the file size smaller and improve loading and saving performance. Since the game uses procedural generation content, the save files have to include a lot more data than most games, making plain text not ideal.
That said, there will be versions of the game with cheats soon, which should make modifying save files unnecessary