Public API Core

Base class for your data. Inherit it and its serialized fields persist between sessions. Explained in How saving works.

Saves and loads a persistent asset. The built-in managers derive from it; so does any custom one. Worked example: A custom persistence manager.

Global entry point for state and operations shared across every manager. Explained in How saving works.

A manager's data as portable text, and where it is stored. Every method takes the manager to act on and does nothing when it is null.

Reach a registered persistent asset from anywhere, by type, with no serialized reference. A target whose manager is Always Global registers itself; you can also register your own. Explained in Save and load.

Base for operation outcomes. Use the intent-named flags rather than the raw Type. Explained in How saving works.

A load outcome. Adds IsInvalid (no usable data, the normal first run) and IsCorrupt, which refines it: the save was there and could not be read, rather than the ordinary first run. Factory methods Success(byte[] payload, string message = null, byte[] mergeWith = null), Invalid(string message = null), Corrupt(string message = null), Failure(string message = null) for managers. Returning the right one is what keeps saves safe: Invalid and Corrupt leave the target on its values with saving allowed, so the next save overwrites; Failure means the storage is temporarily unavailable and leaves the target not ready, so no save can overwrite what a retry could still recover. Explained in How saving works.

A save outcome. Factory methods Success(string message = null), Failure(string message = null). Explained in How saving works.

A clear outcome. Factory methods Success(string message = null), Failure(string message = null). Explained in How saving works.

Why a load or save ran, carried by its events and by a manager's storage methods. Manual: an explicit Save or Load call. Automatic: the auto-load on scope-in, an auto-save safe point, or a slot change. SlotCopy and SlotSnapshot: a Slots copy or rename, and a Slots.SaveTo, which only a custom manager's storage methods see. Explained in Save and load.

Coroutine handle on a running operation (where TResult : class; TResult is a Result or Result[]). yield return it; Result (null while running), IsDone.

A snapshot of a manager's readiness, taken when read. IsReady remains the only data-safety signal; Reason and Origin are for interface and diagnostics. Explained in How saving works.

Where the data the target holds came from, which is what answers Continue versus New Game. Not PersistenceSource, which says what triggered an operation.

Migrate old saves forward. int SaveVersion, void Upgrade(int fromVersion, SaveNode oldData), bool Downgrade(int fromVersion). Explained in Update a shipped save.

Fold two diverging saves of one object together instead of discarding one. bool Merge(int fromVersion, SaveNode otherData), returning whether anything changed. Needs a serializer supporting ParseToNode; without one there is no other side to fold in and the manager keeps the most recent save instead. Must be commutative and idempotent, or concurrent devices never settle. The asset already holds the more recent of the two, so fold otherData into it; otherData is never null, a missing value reading as its default, and fromVersion is the other save's version, which only matters if your field names changed. Implementing it settles the conflict, so a remote manager's conflict policy is not consulted and Conflicts.OnAny never fires for the object. See Merge two saves.

Reset or restore individual fields. Events DefaultValuesRequested and CurrentValuesRequested return a SaveNode (do not subscribe from your own code).

OnBeforeScopeIn(string slot, bool enable), OnAfterScopeOut(string slot, bool disable). Both run on every scope change, a slot change included. enable is true only on the session's first scope-in and disable only on its last scope-out, so one-time setup and teardown go behind those two. Explained in Save and load.

Runs your own code around the save itself: OnBeforeSerialize() just before the object is written, to flatten what the serializer cannot store (a dictionary into two lists, a cache into a field), and OnAfterDeserialize() right after it is read back, to rebuild and clamp it. Unity's ISerializationCallbackReceiver does the same for its own serializer; this one fires whichever serializer the manager uses. Explained in React to load and save.

Skip saves while unchanged. bool IsDirty { get; set; } (reset to false after a successful save). Explained in Save and load.

void DynamicInitialize() runs once after a load found no save (never overwrites a save, never in edit mode). Explained in Save and load.

PersistencePolicy Policy { get; }. Every non-null field of the PersistencePolicy struct overrides the matching manager setting. Explained in Save and load.

The manager settings an IPersistencePolicy object can drive; a null field leaves the manager's own setting in charge. Explained in Save and load.

Operate on a slot's saved data (copy, rename, delete, snapshot to, load from). Every operation ignores a target whose manager does not use slots, and says so in the console. Explained in Slots and save menus.

Always-global object that records one entry per save slot with a summary you define, without loading the saves. TTarget is constrained to ScriptableObject. Build a save-select menu on it.

Read-only record of one slot in a PersistentSlotRegistry. Explained in Slots and save menus.

Nothing to implement: PersistentSlotRegistry already does, and the no-code components use it to read any registry without knowing what it summarizes (SavedSlots, LatestSlot, NextRingSlot, NextFreeSlot). Take it as a parameter type to write a menu script that works with any registry.

A save-slot preview image that serializes as a string, so it rides inside a slot summary. Capture it with the static methods, then decode it on demand for a save-select menu. Its ScreenshotFormat is Jpg (smaller, lossy, no alpha) or Png (lossless).

Hear about save conflicts and answer them. A conflict is raised when a load finds that this device and another one both saved the same object since they last agreed; the load stays undecided and the target not ready until something answers. Explained in Ask the player.

The two sides of a save conflict, for showing the player what they are choosing between: DateTime LocalTime / RemoteTime, and SaveNode LocalData / RemoteData (Missing when the serializer has no node support, never null).

KeepLocal, KeepRemote. The answer to Conflicts.Resolve.

Asks the player which of two saves to keep, when a load finds that this device and another one both saved the same object without seeing each other's changes. It draws both sides with their times, marks the more recent one, and answers the conflict with whichever is picked. Add it to a GameObject, or drop in the Persistent Asset Conflict Prompt prefab; it needs no wiring. See Ask the player.

Tells the player why the game is not closing yet: while the shutdown drain waits for a save in flight, it draws "Saving your progress" over everything. Ships in every build, unlike the debug overlay, and appears only once the wait outlasts half a second so a quick save never flickers. Add it to a GameObject, or drop in the Persistent Asset Drain Display prefab; it needs no wiring, it listens to the drain events.

Custom serialization. Must not fail on valid data. Worked example: A custom serializer.

Read-only, format-neutral view of a saved payload. It is what IUpgradable.Upgrade reads an old save from, what IMergeable.Merge reads the other device's save from, what IFieldResettable's two events hand back, and what Serializer.ParseToNode produces. Explained in Update a shipped save.

The project-wide table of assets save data may point at, and the lookup turning a stored id back into its asset. It is what lets a reference to a project asset survive a save. Filled in the editor (see AssetRegistration in the Editor Extension area); a registered asset is included in the build and loaded at startup. Reach for it when writing your own Serializer, which has to save a reference as its id.

An on-screen panel showing what persistence is doing in a running game: every active manager, and for the selected one its state, its logs, what its storage holds against what the object holds, and buttons forcing a load, a save or a clear. It is the inspector's information on a device. Add it to a GameObject, or drop in the Persistent Asset Debug Overlay prefab. Editor and development builds only: a release build removes it on Awake unless Keep In Release Builds is on. See Debugging.

None, TopLeft, TopRight, BottomLeft, BottomRight. Which corner opens a PersistenceDebugOverlay when tapped. None turns the gesture off, leaving the toggle key and your own code as the ways in.

For code that extends the package: writes to the Unity console with the standard colored "[Persistent Asset ...]" prefix. Pass the sub-module name as module (e.g. nameof(BuiltIns)), or null for Core.