Polaris IO

Polaris is a Game SDK for Unity that provides almost essential features. These features make sure your development time stays in what makes your game special.

Development notes

IO is built as close to .NET as possible. This should make it very easy to use in other CLR applications, such as Godot or Unreal CLR.

JSON/YAML

By default, all public properties and variables of a given object are serialised and deserialised. Below are ways you can configure this:

JSON

• To exclude a public property or variable: Use the [JsonIgnore] attribute.
• To include a private variable: Use the [JsonProperty] attribute.
• To choose an alternate alias for the variable: Use the [JsonProperty(string alias)] attribute.
• To learn more click here.

YAML

• To exclude a public property or variable: Use the [YamlIgnore] attribute.
• To choose an alternate alias for the variable: Use the [YamlMember(string alias)] attribute.

Introduction

IO is a subset of Polaris that makes it simpler to use common IO operations in Unity.

IO doesn't really add anything new to your program. It is simply a wrapper that gives you a platform-independent, higher-level and consistent approach to common IO functions. The simplification may seem minor but it can really reduce redundancy.

Of course this higher-level approach may not be ideal for all circumstances, but you can always use this side by side with the more native and lower-level methods.

I initially designed IO to reduce redundancy in my code and to easily switch between System.IO and UnityEngine.Windows when creating UWP games. This small system has made doing IO operations so much easier for me that I thought why not share it.

Simplification

• Why remember how to write and read with every file format? Just use Json.Write(), Binary.Write(), Yaml.Write(), etc.
• Why have redundant lines of code? Just use a one liner.
• Why write your own async operations? Just use Json.ReadAsync(), Binary.ReadAsync(), etc.
• Why try to remember the location of the save folder? Just use strongly-typed references like Paths.SaveFolder.
• Why replace a working older save file with a newer corrupt one? When enabled, every file you create will only overwrite when all data has been written.
• Why create your own backup system? Do Utilities.BackupFolder() to backup any folder with a desired backup limit, and then use Utilities.RecoverBackup() to recover a desired backup.

Features

• Write, TryWrite, WriteAsync, Read, TryRead, ReadAsync
  • Text
  • JSON
  • YAML
  • Binary
• File and directory recovery
• Default file extensions
• Strongly-typed static references for paths

View the documentation to learn more (the documentation is outdated, but may still provide some useful examples. The library itself has a lot of documentation).

Dependencies

• Unity 2019.3 or later
• YamlDotNet (tested with YamlDotNet for Unity v6.1.2)
• Newtonsoft Json.NET (tested with JSON .NET for Unity v2.0.1 (v8.0.2))
• K4os.Compression.LZ4 (tested with v1.2.4)
• LZMA SDK (tested with v19.00)

The dependencies are included in the releases.

Adding to your Unity project

1. Go to the latest release and download the desired version.
2. Extract the Plugins folder to your project's Assets folder.