Unsure how to serialize MonoBehaviours and Scriptable Objects

Vallar · July 2018

Hi all,

I have made an AI system that uses both MonoBehaviours and Scriptable Objects and I need to sync information between the two. This results in having to pass the MonoBehaviour around or at least a Scriptable Object. I looked into the Serialization tutorial in Photon and I really didn't understand a whole lot, as usual. So I went to the internet and did some searching. Anyway here is my serialize/deserialize code:


public static class CustomPUNSerialization
{
public static byte[] SerializeGameObject(GameObject _obj)
{
BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();

using (MemoryStream m = new MemoryStream())
{
b.Serialize(m, _obj);

return m.ToArray();
}
}

public static GameObject DeserializeGameObject(byte[] _array)
{
using (MemoryStream m = new MemoryStream())
{
BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();

m.Write(_array, 0, _array.Length);
m.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

return (GameObject)b.Deserialize(m);
}
}

public static byte[] SerializeEnemyAI(EnemyAI _ai)
{
BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();

using (MemoryStream m = new MemoryStream())
{
b.Serialize(m, _ai);

return m.ToArray();
}
}


public static EnemyAI DeserializeEnemyAI(byte[] _array)
{
using (MemoryStream m = new MemoryStream())
{
BinaryFormatter b = new BinaryFormatter();

m.Write(_array, 0, _array.Length);
m.Seek(0, SeekOrigin.Begin);

return (EnemyAI)b.Deserialize(m);
}
}
}

I marked both classes EnemyAI and EnemyState with System.Serializable and ended up with an error that apparently MonoBehaviours and Scriptable Objects can't use the System.Serializable. So I am not sure exactly what to do at this point really. Any idea what can be done with this?

A sample of the code I have and will need to pass around in the network is this:



public void UpdateState(EnemyAI _ai)
{
if (PhotonNetwork.isMasterClient)
{
_ai.photonView.RPC("DoActions", PhotonTargets.All, CustomPUNSerialization.SerializeEnemyAI(_ai));
_ai.photonView.RPC("CheckState", PhotonTargets.All, CustomPUNSerialization.SerializeEnemyAI(_ai));
}
}

[PunRPC]
private void DoActions(byte[] _ai)
{
EnemyAI ai = CustomPUNSerialization.DeserializeEnemyAI(_ai);
for (int i = 0; i < actions.Length; i++)
actions[i].ApplyAction(ai);
}

[PunRPC]
private void CheckState(byte[] _ai)
{
EnemyAI ai = CustomPUNSerialization.DeserializeEnemyAI(_ai);
ai.CheckState(decision.Decide(ai));
}

Jasper_w · July 2019

I also failed to serialize my own class... you can get around this however by creating a static method "Serialize" on the classes you want to serialize and then calling them like this.

OnPhotonSerializeView(stream, info)
{
     TheClassWithTheMethod.Serialize(obj1, stream, info);
     TheClassWithTheMethod.Serialize(obj2, stream, info);
     if(stream.IsWriting) {} else {} //The rest of the method

}

Unsure how to serialize MonoBehaviours and Scriptable Objects

Answers