help with a text-based game (I/O)

[JeniferCaperman]

I am new to VB.Net. As a self-tutorial, I decided to create a simple text based puzzle game to teach myself about VB.Net, objects, forms, etc. I figured that I could use the base knowledge I have (minor stuff from VB6), and when I get stumped, just research the problem I dont understand. The game itself was only intended to be a very small project (or is that now solution in VB.Net?); just enough to get my feet wet with VB.Net.
The game took off, and has come quite far. I am still new to VB.Net, so most of my code would probably be laughed at by most of you, but I am quite proud of it.
I decided since the game can not be completed in under an hour (unless you already know all the secrets and puzzles), I would like a way for the user of the game to save their game, and then be able to load it at another time.
My question is: would this best be handled by creating a database (which I have no understanding of), or by creating a simple text file(s)? I would rather use a text file, as I do not know a thing about databases.
My game is a very basic VB.Net windows application. Just a couple of forms, and some objects. However, the variables I created are constantly changing, such as the players score, number of puzzles completed, items discovered. I am setting these all to variables in the code, and continuously updating them when a player solves certain puzzles, such as
PlayersScore = PlayersScore + 500
when they solve a puzzle (yes - I already read about the shortcut I could use for this small piece of code - I believe it was += - but like I said, I am doing this as a basic tutorial).
How can I save all these variables (about 46 all together), so that when the player reloads a game, they are prepopulated to the same variable names (such as PlayersScore = 1500), the next time they start up the game?
I tried to search for writing to a text file on the Internet, but all I keep finding is how to take a large amount of text, write it to a text file, than read it back in later. This is not what I need. I need a way to save variables, not a bunch of text.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Bucky]

This is a perfect situation where the System.Xml.Serialization
namespace comes into play. Using XML Serialization, you can
easily go from a class, to an XML file, and back again.

Before you can use it, however, you need to turn all your
variables into properties of a single class. Then you can just load
and save this class as needed.

You will most likely want to encrypt the values before saving, and
edcrypt them when you load them, as it is insanely easy to
change them just by opening up the XML file in notepad. This
encryption can be done with classes in the
System.Security.Cryptography namespace.

For information on XML Serialization:
[mshelp]ms-help://MS.VSCC/MS.MSDNVS/Cpqstart/html/cpsmpnetsamples-howtoxmlserialization.htm#cpsmpreadwritexmlsample[/mshelp]
[mshelp]ms-help://MS.VSCC/MS.MSDNVS/cpref/html/frlrfsystemxmlserializationxmlserializerclasstopic.htm[/mshelp]

And for info on encryption:
[mshelp]ms-help://MS.VSCC/MS.MSDNVS/Cpqstart/html/cpsmpnetsamples-howtocryptography.htm[/mshelp]
[mshelp]ms-help://MS.VSCC/MS.MSDNVS/cpref/html/frlrfSystemSecurityCryptography.htm[/mshelp]