This week I am researching different methods of creating and loading game saves. Our game is intended to have the ability to track the players progress through the game so they may pick up where they left off later on if they choose to stop playing. One potential option I thought about was using a save password. Saves passwords were commonly used in older games to skip ahead to a previously reached level through entering a short code you received at the last level you beat. At first I though this would apply well to our game but after further consideration it could prove inefficient. Depend on the number of potential routes and items in our game the number of combinations of different play states may be too high for password generating to be more viable then just saving the players location and inventory to a JSON file.

The JSON file approach is much more efficient. From this file the game will load the character into the the last room from their previous playthrough with their items they have obtained from playing loaded into their inventory. As we are yet to code the game class we don’t have a full idea just how much we can optimize this load and saving process.