
7
Robust File I/O
Alan Kimball
7.1 Introduction
Reading data from storage is a core feature required in any game engine. Be
it a hard drive, a cartridge, a disc, or from the cloud, game data needs to be
deserialized quickly. At the same time, during development it is vitally important
for game data and formats to be iterated quickly. During much of the development
of a game, assets and game systems need to be developed in parallel. The need
for efficiency and robustness can lead to many problems during development. By
building two compatible but different serialization systems inside an engine, both
of these requirements can be handled in a simple and robust ...