DawnBringer3D Tips & Tricks, Personal News, Game Development

Do not use magic numbers!

Well let’s take an example :

int i;

for (i = 0; i < 128; i++)
{
switch(ship[i].type)
{
case 0 : ship[i].speed = 100.0f; break;
//…
}
}

Got the point? Those numbers there doesn’t tell a thing about them, that’s why it is good practise to get rid of the numbers and replace them with something more understandable. Check the modified version :

enum ShipType
{
SHIP_TYPE_CARRIER=0,
//…
SHIP_TYPE_MAX
};

#define SHIP_SPEED_SLOW 100.0f
#define NUM_SHIPS 128

int i

for (i = 0; i < NUM_SHIPS; i++)
{
switch(ship[i].type)
{
case SHIP_TYPE_CARRIER : ship[i].speed = SHIP_SPEED_SLOW; break;
//…
default : assert(ship[i].type < SHIP_TYPE_MAX); break;
}
}

That’s better right?

It is very important to keep your code readable!

By the way if anybody knows a good way to display code, please let me know as this sucks.

Warnings

This is simple, but very important and usually forgotten.

Warnings are there for a reason, so get rid of them!

And setup your compiler right :

• Change the warning level to maximum.

• Even better : treat warnings as errors.

Function cohesion

High cohesion means that you code is reusable, reliable, etc. Now quess what low cohesion means?

Best kind of function cohesion is when a routine performs only one operation without using any other routines. Why does this matter? It is easier to maintain than a routine that does 100 things and contains 1000 lines. Compare that routine to a routine that does 1 thing and contains only 10 lines.

There has been research statistic about this, and the lowest amount of bugs was in small routines with high cohesion. But that is obvious, so everytime you create a new function, try to remember the rule of doing only one thing.

Try to keep things as simple as possible.