Serialization and EngineState

EngineState is Gondwana’s snapshot-and-restore mechanism for runtime state. It is a structured capture of the engine’s live registries and content collections.

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What it can include

Depending on selected EngineStateParts, it can save/load:

• asset files
• tilesheets
• animation cycles
• scenes
• sprites
• audio resources

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Important behavior

LoadFromFile clears current state first.

MergeFromFile does not clear the current state.

That distinction matters:

• use load for full restore
• use merge for patching or layering in content

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Compression

State can optionally be written through GZip, which is useful when snapshots get large.

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Design note

Most stateful engine systems are registry-backed, so EngineState works more like a snapshot facade over live engine collections than a totally isolated save object.

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Where to read next

• Gondwana/EngineState.cs
• Gondwana/EngineStateParts.cs