saving player information in an external file - unity3d

Question

This is the main menu in my first test 2d game in the world of unity :
I want to save high scores and if the player pressed the "Best Scores" button I want to show them the best scores yet ^^ , so I think I need to use an external file to save this type of information and open it at run time ... How ? which kind of files is the best to perform that ?

Answer 1

In addition to the answer above:
PlayerPrefs doesn't handle and store custom types and collections unless you cast those types to strings or other data, though. It's really useful to convert desired data to JSON and store the JSON string in PlayerPrefs, then fetch and parse that data when you need it again. Doing this will add another layer of complexity, but will also add another layer of protection and the ability to encrypt the data itself. Also, the Web Player is currently the only platform that has limits on PlayerPrefs according to Unity's docs:
There is one preference file per Web player URL and the file size is
limited to 1 megabyte. If this limit is exceeded, SetInt, SetFloat and
SetString will not store the value and throw a PlayerPrefsException.
Source:
http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/ScriptReference/PlayerPrefs.html

Answer 2

Writing:
PlayerPrefs.SetInt("score",5);
PlayerPrefs.SetFloat("volume",0.6f);
PlayerPrefs.SetString("username","John Doe");
// Saving a boolean value
bool val = true;
PlayerPrefs.SetInt("PropName", val ? 1 : 0);
PlayerPrefs.Save();
Reading:
int score = PlayerPrefs.GetInt("score");
float volume = PlayerPrefs.GetFloat("volume");
string player = PlayerPrefs.GetString("username");
bool val = PlayerPrefs.GetInt("PropName") == 1 ? true : false;

Answer 3

The simplest solution is using PlayerPrefs. It has limited space and a small set of data that can be saved (int, float, string), but it could be enough for a simple game.
If you need more space or more complex data structures to be saved, than you have to store them on the file system itself (or in a server if you have some backend support). Unity doesn't provide any built-in support for this.

Answer 4

C# is like this
//these variables will send the values in.
public static string exampleString = "hi youtube"; //it needs to be public ans static
public static int exampleInt = 1;
public static float exampleFloat = 3.14;
//these vaibles will collect the saved values
string collectString;
int collectInt;
float collectFloat;
public static void Save () { //this is the save function
PlayerPrefs.SetString ("exampleStringSave", exampleString);
// the part in quotations is what the "bucket" is that holds your variables value
// the second one in quotations is the value you want saved, you can also put a variable there instead
PlayerPrefs.SetInt ("exampleIntSave", exampleInt);
PlayerPrefs.SetFloat ("exampleFloatSave", exampleFloat);
PlayerPrefs.Save ();
}
void CollectSavedValues () {
collectString = PlayerPrefs.GetString ("exampleStringSave");
collectInt = PlayerPrefs.GetInt ("exampleIntSave");
collectFloat = PlayerPrefs.GetFloat ("exampleFloatSave");
)
void Awake () { //this is simialar to the start function
Save ();
CollectSavedValues ();
}
void Update () {
Debug.Log (collectString);
Debug.Log (collectInt);
Debug.Log (collectFloat);
}