CM3D2.Serialization

The serializer to end all serializers.

Defining Types

Instead of using a large and complicated import and export function, CM3D2.Serialization can instead use a class/struct that defines fields in the same order as they are stored in the file. This way an entire file can simply be deserialized as a single instance of a class.

For example, if the binary of a .mate file looks like this:

Field  | signature                                    version     name           ...
Type   | string                                       Int32       string         ...
Value  |    C  M  3  D  2  _  M  A  T  E  R  I  A  L  1000           h  a  i  r  ...
Binary | 0E 43 4D 33 44 32 5F 4D 41 54 45 52 49 41 4C E8 03 00 00 13 68 61 69 72 ...

A simple class definition with fields that match the layout of the file's binary is enough to tell the CM3D2Serializer how to serialize the type:

[AutoCM3D2Serializable]
public partial class Mate : ICM3D2Serializable
{
    public string signature;
    public int version;
    public string name;
    // ...
}

And a serializer can now read a .mate file from a filestream as a Mate class:

var serializer = new CM3D2Serializer();
var mate = serializer.Deserialize<Mate>(filestream);
Console.WriteLine(mate.name);
Console.WriteLine(mate.version);
// Console Output:
// hair...
// 1000

More complicated types can have further control by manually implementing ICM3D2Serializable.ReadWith(ICM3D2Reader reader) and ICM3D2Serializable.WriteWith(ICM3D2Writer writer)

Gotchas

• Q: Is reflection being used to find the serializable fields in a type marked with the [AutoCM3D2Serializable] attribute? Doesn't reflection have large performance drawbacks?
• A: No, the use of reflection is very minimal in this project. Instead, two functions are generated at compile time that serialize / deserialize the type on-demand.

• Q: How are structs that don't implement ICM3D2Serializable serialized?
• A: In the case of an unmanaged struct S, the amount of memory allocated to hold it's data on the heap is a fixed number. An instance of struct S can be quickly deserialized by reading in a byte array of the same length, and tricking the .NET runtime into beliving that byte array is instead an allocation of struct S on the heap.