I am currently writing a 2D game using the XNA Game Studio 4.0 framework for Windows Phone 7. I have gotten to the stage where I am tackling the problem of tomb-stoning the game if the user would like to save/load or if they resume the game at a later point.
I'm currently using the TiledLib library for the rendering etc of the map and also the screen state management example as a basis for my project (eg the events for tombstoning correctly are all in place). The Map object in the TiledLib library has a multidimensional array ([,]) to store the tiles of the map within each TileLayer. My map only has one TileLayer, and only 1 Texture2D with different Rectangle source locations base on what the tile is displaying. It is important that I track all of the appropriate source rectangles for each tile so the map that has been edited can be resumed the way the player left it.
I'm having quite a lot of trouble trying to work out the best way (or any way) to achieve tombstoning for the game screen. I have not had much experience with serialization and this is my first attempt at tombstoning for a Windows Phone 7 application. I understand that non-jagged arrays can not be serialized using the usual XmlSerializer, is there a method to get around this? Is a custom serializer a good path to go down? Pros/Cons? Has any one else had experience with TileLib and serializing a game screen? Or a 2D map with an X,Y coordinates? How much data is too much data to serialize for tombstoning?
Thanks in advance for answers and advice.
