Save&&Load System

Overview

The Generic Inventory System (GIS) provides full serialization support through its inventory subsystem and allows complete customization of its underlying logic via the inventory factory.

Inventory Subsystem

GIS offers a comprehensive API through GIS_InventorySubsystem for creating/duplicating item instances, collections, and saving/loading inventories, item collections, and item instances.

Save/Load Example

GIS provides a robust serialization API to easily integrate with any dedicated save system.

You only need to focus on saving the InventoryRecord (the inventory’s save data) to disk or a database and retrieving it to initialize the inventory system.

In the demo included with the GIS's paired project, I’ve implemented a simple component and guid based save manager to demonstrate how to use the serialization API.

Inventory Factory

The API provided by GIS_InventorySubsystem is essentially a wrapper around GIS_InventoryFactory.

You can inherit from GIS_InventoryFactory in Blueprint or C++ to fully customize GIS’s underlying operations.

Additionally, you need to specify your custom inventory factory class in Project Settings -> GIS Inventory System Settings.

Text workflow and boundaries

1. Use GIS_InventorySubsystem::SerializeInventory to produce an FGIS_InventoryRecord; the subsystem delegates the underlying work to the configurable GIS_InventoryFactory.
2. Your project writes records to SaveGame, files, or a database and handles versioning, read failures, and migration. To restore, call InitializeInventorySystemWithRecord on an uninitialized inventory component on authority. It calls DeserializeInventory internally and completes initialization; test collection, item, and UI events with your project initialization order.
3. FGIS_CurrencyRecord is a separate currency record; do not assume InventoryRecord contains currency. Fragment state persistence also depends on serializable targets and SaveGame fields; see Data Mixin System.
4. Configure InventoryFactoryClass in UGIS_DeveloperSettings. The companion project's BC_GIS_Demo_SaveManager, BC_GIS_Demo_Saver, and B_GIS_Demo_SaveGame are examples. Test restart, missing assets, and version upgrades.