Purpose
User Profiles solve two problems. They allow for multiple sets of user preferences to be saved globally to the profile. And they allow savegames to be grouped under a profile.
You can either use Use Profiles to represent people or use them to represent playthroughs.
Features
User Profiles are stored in the Games appdata location. Typically user://profiles/. This path is defined in UserProfiles.gd
Each Profile maintains a global data storage. This allows for storing settings that apply to that profile/playthrough. Like enabling tutorials, subtitles, or other settings that don’t need to be global to the entire application.
Each Profile maintains a directory of savegames, and its own backup history for them. See Saving Games
User Profiles are accessed via App.profiles.
The currently active profile is accessible via App.profiles.current
A default profile called default is re-created each time the game is run. If you do not wish to engage with profiles, then you may safely do so. All save data will be stored under user://profiles/default/.
Important functions
UserProfiles.create_profile() will create a profile with that name.
UserProfiles.set_profile_as_active() will set a profile as active. Make sure to call this after creating a new profile.
UserProfiles.delete_profile_forever() will permanently delete a profile and all save data associated with it.
UserProfiles.save_all_user_data() will save all user data for all existing profiles. Use this after you change a setting like tutorials_enabled in your project. Note: This does not create any ‘save games’, those are separate. see Saving Games
Using User Data
This is an example of how to save and read a tutorials_enabled flag:
# Sets the tutorial_enabled flag to false.
App.profiles.current.user_data.stage_bool("tutorial_enabled", false)
# Write this change to disk.
App.profiles.current.save_user_data()
# Retrieve the value from the current profile. Including a default if it is not found.
var tutorial_enabled: bool = App.profiles.current.user_data.get_bool("tutorial_enabled", true)For more details on how to interact with the UserProfile.user_data object, see Saving Games. Note: In simple games that do not need individual save files, you can rely on user_data only as your save game.