Transcendence Community Wiki

Consistant naming practices help people work on or with your code. This includes yourself, after you've not looked at your own code for a while.

Pick a short, perhaps 3-5 character 'tag' for yourself for general use. If you're working on a particuarly massive project (think dockscreen framework or weapons extended), consider using giving the project it's own tag. Use this tag in all of your global names to avoid naming clashes.

In the examples on the wiki, 'wki' will be used as an example tag unless the code comes from a pre-existing source. [clunky… rewrite -wvr].

George's code uses short type-type prefixes reminiscent of one of the standard c/c++ variable styles. This is particuarly helpful when you have several different entities relating to the same concept; e.g. a ship that's also an item and has an overlay and a dockscreen named after it can share most of a name easily.

Using the unique modder tag on your unids makes it a little clearer where the types are coming from and lets other modders reference your unids with the same names you do, by just copying their entity definitions from the top of your file, and with no fear of name collisions.

The one exception is the unid for the extesnsion itself. You could make an appropriate name for each file if you like, but it's conventional otherwise to just use UNIDExtension for it. It's (typically?) only used in exactly one place per extension.

[todo: add table with each type, prefix george uses for it, and examples -wvr]

The global variable and function namespace (functions are stored as variables in tlisp) is a messy, large, and rather disorganized space (just check the output of sysGlobals to see it). It contains

• All the builtin functions (list, objGetName)
• All of the system global variables (gPlayerShip)
• All the event variables (gScreen, aHitPos) which are left around without being cleared even when the event they were set for is over.
• All of George's tlisp functions,

Universal functions, list adapted from head of Code.xml:

• int - Internal functions (may change from version to version)
• math - General math functions
• obj - General object functions
• scr - General functions relating to dock screens
• str - General string functions
• sys - General functions relating to star systems

Faction / entity specific functions

todo - move this to a list of george's acronyms and stuff

• arc - (Iocrym) archive from Heretic
• bam - Battle Arena Maximus
• chr - Charon pirates
• com - Commonwealth
• csc - Commonwealth Star Carrier (from the fleet)
• dom - Domina
• flt - Commonwealth Fleet
• her - Heretic
• hua - Huari
• kor - Korolov Shipping
• mil - Commonwealth Militia
• mrad - MRAD probe from Heretic
• mne - Commonwealth Mining (any idea what the acronym stands for? -wvr)
• neu - Neurohack device from Heretic
• srv - Service? (used once in code.xml)
• stk - St. Katherine's System
• sun - Sung Slavers
• ter - Teratons

todo - temporary - need it's own page