Custom Snapshot Data

In some circumstances you may want to add additional data to the network snapshot that gets sent to clients when they join a server. One example of this might be serializing and deserializing voxel world data.

Components in the Scene can write and read their own data during the snapshot sending and receiving process by implementing Component.INetworkSnapshot.

To write snapshot data for a Component you can simply implement the WriteSnapshot method on a component.

  	private byte[] MyVoxelData { get; set; }
    
	void INetworkSnapshot.WriteSnapshot( ref ByteStream writer )
	{
		writer.WriteArray( MyVoxelData );
	}

Reading snapshot data can be done by implementing ReadSnapshot on a component. If you have expensive loading work to do with this data, override OnLoad and return a Task so the loading screen waits for it to finish before continuing.

	void INetworkSnapshot.ReadSnapshot( ref ByteStream reader )
	{
        MyVoxelData = reader.ReadArray<byte>();
	}
 
    protected override async Task OnLoad()
    {
        await LoadVoxelWorld( MyVoxelData );
    }

	private Task LoadVoxelWorld( byte[] data )
	{
		// ...
		return Task.CompletedTask;
	}