De-serializing GameObjects Without Instantiating

So let's say i have a GameObject, which is essentially a container for several other GameObjects.

When i destroy this GameObject, i want to save all of its stored data to a file, and I want to be able to load all of this stored data at any point and assign all of the saved data to an existing GameObject without instantiating an entirely new one (there would be a lot of overhead involved in instantiating all of the saved data).

I know for a fact i could write my own serialization methods but i figured there would be a more elegant solution to this. If anyone can help, i would be very grateful.

 

sorry, no actual help but a couple free assets that might be helpfull

check out the video on this free asset page? seems like what you describe...
http://whydoidoit.com/unityserializer/

or
https://github.com/jacobdufault/fullserializer

 

I have the UnitySerializer you linked, however it doesn't seem to do what i need.

I just need some way to read entity data from a file and assign that data to an existing entity instead of instantiating one.

 

Well, at a very minimum, you'll have to have all the GameObjects and their components already there, and a way to line them up with appropriate read-ins, which kind of begs the question, what data exactly are you reading? Are you sure you're not better off just grabbing the tidbits you need?

 

I have an entity which is essentially a container for a 2d array of other entities (tiles, to be specific).

I want to be able to save those tiles as binary/json/whatever. Then when i read it back in, instead of instantiating a new 2d array of tiles i would just read the tile data and apply it to an already existing 2d array of tiles.

 

That's pretty much what I'd guessed. My question remains - what makes these tiles special? If they're types - grass, wall, rock, etc. - you could probably just save a two-dimensional array of integers and apply them as sprite selections and behavior parameters.

 

If you want to save just this "array of tiles" just serialize/deserialize them using XmlSerialization or BinnaryFormater