Saving Games

Saving progress is a fundamental part of most games. This article explains how our saving system works.

Contents

• How Saving Works
• How To: Saving and Loading
• Detecting Failure
• Where is Data Saved?
• Challenge: Checkpoints

How Saving Works

Saving in Stencyl uses a game’s Game Attributes to save data.

All you have to do is structure your game such that anything you want to save is stored in Game Attributes.

Similarly, loading a save file will completely overwrite your Game Attributes and replace them with the values of those in the save file.

Saving and Loading are instant - these operations will not hang your game. That said, Saving and Loading are blocking operations in the sense that nothing else will happen until those operations are complete.

How To: Saving and Loading

Saving and Loading involve just use these two blocks. (Game > Saving)

That's it!

Detecting Failure

Occasionally, a player will be unable to save, usually due to restrictive security settings.

If saving/loading fails, you can detect this and use the “save succeeded” and “load succeeded” blocks react appropriately, such as showing an error message.

To use them, just drag them out as pictured.

Where is Data Saved?

Flash games use Local Shared Objects. That is to say, it's stored by the browser indefinitely until cleared out.

iOS games store save data directly on the file system using CoreData. This data is not deleted until the game itself is deleted (and settings/data are explicitly told to be removed).

Summary

• Saving is based on Game Attributes.
• Loading will overwrite all Game Attribtues.
• Saving/Loading is an instant operation.

Challenge: Checkpoints

Many games use a checkpoint system, a system in which reaching a certain part of the level will guarantee that, if a player dies, the player can continue from that checkpoint, rather than starting from the beginning.

Create a simple checkpoint system for your game, such that even if the player exits out of the game, he’ll begin from the last checkpoint he reached.

xandramas
my confusion is not the saving of the attributes its the loading and initial setting of the players stats before the first save. How do you tell the player he has a game attribute value of 5 when the player starts the game and it not change the value during the save? Put that initial game attribute value before the player loads the game, like on the start screen?
1 4 months, 3 weeks ago

Auni38
Nice, this works!
0 4 months, 4 weeks ago

DrunkenOrc
There's no specific place you have to put these code blocks. You can make the game save at any time you want; when something happens, when a button is clicked, and so on.

If you don't understand how to implement code blocks, you should read earlier sections of this wiki. Once you understand the basics of Stencyl, this section will make more sense.
1 10 months, 1 day ago

Hunnenkoenig
As always, there is exactly zero help in this.
You just again tell me, that my car has 4 wheels and 4 seats, but you don't tell me, how I can drive it...
0 10 months, 1 day ago

72master
this only shows me what block i need to use i dont know where to put it how to use it in design mode so this is pretty much a tease
1 10 months, 3 weeks ago

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