Serializing GameObjects?

[Jeff Simon]

I'm trying to compose a GameObject at runtime and then serialize it, but am failing. Is this not supported?

Here's a simple repro; attach this to an empty game object in a scene and run it:

public class TestComponent : SerializedMonoBehaviour
{
    public int testValue = 100;
}

public class TestScript : MonoBehaviour
{
    void Start()
    {
        var go = new GameObject();
        go.AddComponent<TestComponent>();

        byte[] bytes = SerializationUtility.SerializeValue(go, DataFormat.JSON);
        File.WriteAllBytes("testOutput", bytes);

        /* Contents of 'testOutput' file after running the above:
        {
            "$id": 0,
            "$type": "0|UnityEngine.GameObject, UnityEngine.CoreModule"
        }
        */
    }
}

I was expecting to see 'TestComponent' in the testOutput file. I just purchased OdinInspector so am still trying to orient myself on what is/isn't expected to work wrt persisting composed GOs.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Tor Esa Vestergaard]

This is indeed not supported by Odin, and will likely never be unless Unity rewrites their asset system - only Unity is able to serialize its own objects down to a file, as Unity does not provide the asset API necessary to do it. All Odin can do is store extra data in a Unity object, and use that to reconstruct complex types that it serialized, when Unity is deserializing the object.