Lou Montana/Sandbox – User

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Future Code Best Practices page

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this is at the moment only a list of topics and absolutely not the final render. Almost each list entry will result in a chapter.

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Category: Scripting Topics

Getting start

Recommended skills and things

• An Arma game
• Passion
• Little bit English knowledge and/or access to a translator to your mother language
• Tutorial/example article (Such as this)
• Skill of Googling
• Advanced text editor (Such as Notepad++)

Best practices

Make it readable

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See Make it readable for the short version!

• Some general coding tips from here: standards, line lengths, etc
  • Variable names should indicate what they store / are used for.

Example

// Instead of private _cd = 360; // do private _countDown = 360;

• Format, indentation, no one-line, spacing, line returns
• Be consistent (space/tab indentation, (camel)casing, K&R style / Allman style indenting)
• Use comments frequently to explain not what the code does, but why it is done this way.

Make reusable functions

• Don't copy and paste the same code, make functions
• Don't make macros to replace SQF code

Variables

• Prefix your public variables and setVariable with your tag
• PRIVATE (or params) your variables
• Use #define SOME_CONST for constant values instead of variables

Code location

• Nothing in init box but local commands for this specific unit - all the init boxes are run client-side on client connection
• 0 = myCommand is "useful" only for editor fields that for no apparent reason refuse commands returning a value.

Final words

• Learn from others' scripts but don't steal code and pretend it's yours — be a decent human being.
• Don't try to obfuscate your code: it is considered rude, especially since you learnt from others.
• Have fun!