Script data saves (luamarshal)

Overview

IMPORTANT

Status: Not supported
Minimal version: 1.0

The Lua Marshal-based save/load utility provides helper functions for saving and loading game state. It abstracts serialization and deserialization so you can persist state between sessions.

Functions

• saveToMarshalFile(stateTable): serializes the provided Lua table (stateTable) and writes it to a file. Useful for storing game state, configs, or any tabular data.

• loadFromMarshalFile(): reads the serialized Lua table from file, deserializes it, and returns the Lua table. Useful for loading previously stored state or configs.

Usage

Similar to the original save(f) / load(r), you can expose save_state() / load_state() in binders to write data into .dat files:

function save_state()
    local gameState = {
        score = 1000,
        level = 5,
        player = {
            name = "Player",
            items = {"x", "y", "z"}
        }
    }
    save_manager.saveToMarshalFile(gameState)
end

Loading:

function load_state()
    local gameState = save_manager.loadFromMarshalFile()

    if gameState then
        score = gameState.score
        level = gameState.level

        if gameState.player then
            player.name = gameState.player.name
            player.items = gameState.player.items
        end
    end
end

Pros

This approach keeps data in a separate .dat file, isolating it from the .scop save file; write size has no upper limit, and it is more resilient against corrupted saves.

Cons

Only standard Lua types are supported: numbers, strings, booleans, tables containing valid types, or functions. userdata is not supported.