Dear Luke,
“A bigger issue is that of binary data - there’s little useful currently available to Rocket users. We can export binary data via UExporter, but there seems little in the way of reading it back in? Should we expect to be using the FileManager and create FileReaders / FileWriters and create and use archives? Is there any kind of example we could be looking at to achieve this end?”
#You are In Luck
I will write you up a tutorial on this, so everything I write below I am saying cause I’m going to explain shortly how to do it.
I have been writing out and reading back in binary files for months now, for my in-game editor.
I am capable currently of writing out and reading in my own custom classes and all relevant data, and I already have a working level saving and level loading features of
- position data
- class-specific properties of any kind
- CUSTOM MATERIALS created during run time by modifying dynamic material instanceproperties
- basically any data I could ever want
#Zipping
Not only am I writing out any data I want as binary files, I am also ZIPPING it using the provided ZLIB functionality of UE4.
#Text
“Expose FileHelper or an equivalent to Rocket users to allow writing out plain text files more easily.”
I already posted a tutorial and provided the entire C++ code for saving text to a human-readible non-binary file
here is that tutorial and code:
#Saving .BMP files
I also wrote up a tutorial on saving screen shots, here is my entire C++ code for custom screenshot saving system
#Summary
Again I wrote all this to let you know it is all possible and easy to do
I am going to write up a tutorial as speedily as I can to explain
- creating binary files and saving any arbitrary data of your choosing
- reading back in this binary files from hard disk
- creating compressed binary files using ZLIB functionality of UE4
#
Rama
PS: for anyone reading this I hope it’s clear I’m not “showing off,” I am indicating it is all very very do-able, I’ve been doing it for months.