Script annotation

Mostly, using Persyst consists on annotating scripts to tell the PersistentObject what to serialize. This comes in two forms: the ISaveable interface, and the [SaveThis] attribute. Both of them live in the namespace Persyst.

ISaveable

You can mark any class as saveable by implementing the ISaveable interface, like so:

using Persyst;

public class SerializableMB : MonoBehaviour, ISaveable
{
}

The interface does not contain any methods that you need to implement. It's just a tag.

Why an interface, then? Why not an attribute?

If you must know, it's because it lets me gather all the relevant components doing GetComponents<ISaveable>() inside of the PersistentObject. It could have been an attribute as well, this is just very slightly more convenient.

The [SaveThis] Attribute

Inside of an ISaveable class, you can mark any field (and most properties) to be serialized with the attribute [SaveThis]. The PersistentObject component attached to this GameObject will take it from there.

using Persyst;

public class SerializableMB : MonoBehaviour, ISaveable
{
    [SaveThis] int someValue;
    [SaveThis] GameObject someReference;
}

Serializing classes that are not ISaveable

This interface is absolutely required for MonoBehaviours, but objects that are nested inside a MonoBehaviour can still be serialized even if their class is not tagged as ISaveable.

using Persyst;

public class SerializableMB : MonoBehaviour, ISaveable
{
  //both of these will be serialized
  [SaveThis] AnISaveableClass isaveableField;
  [SaveThis] NotISaveable nonIsaveableField; 
}

public class AnISaveableClass : ISaveable{
  //...
}

public class NotISaveable{
  //...
}

However, there are some restriction as to how the fields inside of NotISaveable will be serialized. [SaveThis] only really does something if it is inside of an ISaveable class. See Nesting classes and Inheritance for more details on this.

tip

In general, I would recommend that every user-defined class that needs to be serialized implements ISaveable. It will make your life easier.