STYLING.md

Coding Style

I'm taking advantage of Game Maker 8's inconsistent syntax to lazily writing code while also keeping a code styling rule is used to make the code writing consistent.

This will make the code cleaner and faster to type but also makes it look uncomfortable if you are coming from C/C++/Java or other similar language.

I'm trying to make code writing similar to writing Lua code where the code is clean and easy to understand. You can even swap curly brackets in GML with begin and end as equivalent to Lua's then and end.

Guideline

• Don't use ; at the end of a statement.
• No parantheses on if, while, until, switch, with, repeat, return statement expression.
• If an if statement block contain only single statement, put the statement on next line with indent and don't use curly braces. Unless it is a keyword.

if condition
    doSomething()

if condition2 break

• If an if condition contains multiple statement, use brackets.
• If else keyword is used always use curly braces unless both before and after else is a single statement.
• Opening bracket belong at the end of line.

if condition {
    doThis()
    doThat()
} else {
    doSomething()
}

if condition2
    doSomething()
else
    exit

• Use = instead of == for comparisons. Game Maker 8 will treat = inside another = as comparison inside an assignment.

atMaxSpeed = speed = 10 //true

• Use and, or, xor boolean operator instead of &&, ||, ^^.
• Use ' instead of " for writing string.
• Tab out close assignments, statements, and function parameters to align them up where possible.

name     = 'Shiroko'
shooting = false

speed     += min(speed, maxSpeed)
direction  = 30

if doneCalculation   doThis()
if x = 10 and y > 20 doThat()

draw_sprite(sprite,      0, x + 30, y)
draw_sprite(spriteExtra, 2, x,    , 60)

• Don't indent switch blocks.
• If case block contain only single statement, put it on the same line (along with break if used). If contain multiple statement, put in on the next line.

switch status {
case 1: doSomething() break
case 2:
    doThis()
    doThat()
    break
}