Coding Guidelines

Documentation

• Include a NaturalDocs formatted header in your functions

Sanity Checking

• Use CBA ASSERTS to validate data before progressing
• Ideally for every function, use ASSERTS to validate input parameters and output results

Functions Naming

• Use ALIVE_fnc_xxx for your function definitions
• Always use fnc_xxx.sqf for your function file names

Test Harnesses

• Integrate Test scripts to automate testing inherent to the development process
• When bug fixing, modify the test script first to identify the bug, fix the bug, re-run test script
• CBA_fnc_test for testing frameworks

Object Orientation

• Use Object Oriented SQF
• Utilise inheritance/reuse of existing code wherever possible from a parent class using OO

Important Reading

• http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Biki2.0:Performance_Considerations
• http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Code_Optimisation
• ACE mod also has some good guides on approach to script scheduler

Good Practice

• Embrace CBA use of Macros
• Embrace CBA use of function wrappers
• CBA_fnc_debug/error/log and associated MACROs for debug level messages
• Avoid execVM/spawn where possible
• Move all initialisation code/messaging into the module directory
• Avoid global variables - if you want to share a variable, use setVariable on a server side game logic as this allows for multiple instances of the same module.
• Wherever possible use stringtable.xml files to facilitate language localisation in future.
• count is for counting and forEach is traversing items in a collection.

Rules of Thumb

• Avoid loops!
• Non critical operations that have a "near" end can be scheduled but critical operations (like animations or things where you need an exact execution) must be handled within one frame.
• It's better to handle code in unscheduled space because you have direct control over it and it isn't impacted by "engine laziness", as in "waiting" for the next operation to happen.
• You know that your code is executed non-scheduled if waituntil and sleep _time; (within the code you want to execute) doesn't work and an appropriate error is logged to RPT!
• If you want to process too much data in one frame or you overload the schedular then the game engine will freeze for a moment, so split the operations over several frames.