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Variable Storage

Variable Storage components are responsible for storing and retrieving the values of variables in your Yarn scripts. When a Yarn script needs to get the value of a variable, it asks the Variable Storage for it; when a Yarn script sets the value of a variable, the Variable Storage is given the value.

Each game has different requirements for how variables are stored, which means that Yarn Spinner doesn't make any assumptions how the information is actually stored on disk. Instead, you can create your own custom Variable Storage script that implements the methods that Yarn Spinner needs.

If you don't have a game save system, you can use the In-Memory Variable Storage component. This is a simple Variable Storage component that's built into Yarn Spinner.

The In-Memory Variable Storage stores everything in memory; when the game ends, all variables that have been stored are erased.

If you don't connect a Variable Storage to your Dialogue Runner, it will create an In-Memory Variable Storage when the game starts, and use that.

In-Memory Variable Storage

The In-Memory Variable Storage component is a Variable Storage component that stores all variables in memory. These variables are erased when the game stops.

The In-Memory Variable Storage component is intended to be a useful tool for getting started, and to be replaced with a custom variable storage that meets your game's needs.

However, if your game has no need to save and restore game state, then this class can be used in your final game, too.

Inspector

Property

Description

Debug Text View

A Unity UI Text object that will display a summary of the variables that have been stored in this component. If this is not set, this property will not be used.

You can use this property to display a debug summary of your variables at run-time in your games.

Debug Variables

This area of the Inspector shows a summary of the variables. This works similarly to the Debug Text View property, but the summary is only ever shown in the Editor, and it doesn't require any setup.

Custom Variable Storage Components

Every game's data storage requirements are different. For this reason, Yarn Spinner is designed to make it straightforward to create your own custom component for managing how Yarn scripts store and load variables in ways that work with the other parts of your game.

Custom Variable Storage components are subclasses of the abstract class VariableStorageBehaviour. To implement your own, you need to implement the following methods:

public bool TryGetValue<T>(string variableName, out T result);
public void SetValue(string variableName, string stringValue);
public void SetValue(string variableName, float floatValue);
public void SetValue(string variableName, bool boolValue);
public void Clear();
public bool Contains(string variableName);

For a complete tutorial on how to build an entirely custom variable storage system, see Yarn Variables and Custom Variable Storage.