Read Time: 4 minutes

Thank you for being here

The other day I posted on Twitter that we reached 300 of you here.

But now it seems we are already at 350 epic developers like you!

How to build a Save System in 10 minutes

For my small horror game I needed to save some data for the secrets in the game to work properly. I like to manage save data the same way that some old games do, as I find it’s and incredibly simple but effective way to do it.

So for Escape Floor Zero I created a SaveGame object in Unreal and there I created a single variable: A Map of Names to Integers

I want to store things like how many times the player has cleared the game, or if the player has done a certain action or not.

This way storing a value is as easy as writing it into that map, and to read I need to only consult that variable and see if the map contains the value and if it does, what is its value.

To get the data back I simply have a GetSaveDataValue that will return it to me.

When I need to write that to disk, I simply use Unreal’s SaveGameToSlot function to write the SaveGame object to disk.

This may seem like a simple system, but it’s incredibly powerful. It’s the same way a game like Zelda: Breath of the Wild saves which enemies are dead, which locations you have visited or the state of the quest and world.

For more complex use cases you may need something else entirely, but for a simple game it can be a powerful system.

👀 Behind the Scenes 👀

The last time I shared that I built a small horror game during the holidays. As I needed to move fast the consequence of that is that the code for it is not…. the best.

Here you can have a sneak peek at the plate of spaghetti that is the procedural logic of the game.

Please, do not do this at home. This is only like this as I rushed top speed to finish a game super fast, but I do not recommend at all working like this.

🎓 GameDev Knowledge Videos 🎓

This is an incredible talk on how the music for DOOM (2016) was made.

As always if you have any doubt don't hesitate to contact me, see you in the future.