Coding Standards

Specification

As mentioned before, you are expected to follow these specifications in order to make everyone's lives easier, it will also save you and us time, with having to make the changes and us having to tell you what to change. Thank you for reading this section.

• As BYOND's Dream Maker is an object oriented language, code must be object oriented when possible in order to be more flexible when adding content to it. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, it is highly recommended you look it up.

• You must write BYOND code with absolute pathing, like so:

/obj/item/weapon/baseball_bat
    name = "baseball bat"
    desc = "A baseball bat."
    var/wooden = 1

/obj/item/weapon/baseball_bat/examine()
    if(wooden)
        desc = "A wooden baseball bat."
    else
        desc = "A metal baseball bat."
    ..()

• You must not use colons to override safety checks on an object's variable/function, instead of using proper type casting.

• It is rarely allowed to put type paths in a text format, as there are no compile errors if the type path no longer exists. Here is an example:

//Good
var/path_type = /obj/item/weapon/baseball_bat

//Bad
var/path_type = "/obj/item/weapon/baseball_bat"

• You must use tabs to indent your code, NOT SPACES.

• Hacky code, such as adding specific checks, is highly discouraged and only allowed when there is no other option. You can avoid hacky code by using object oriented methodologies, such as overriding a function (called procs in DM) or sectioning code into functions and then overriding them as required.

• Duplicated code is 99% of the time never allowed. Copying code from one place to another maybe suitable for small short time projects but /tg/station focuses on the long term and thus discourages this. Instead you can use object orientation, or simply placing repeated code in a function, to obey this specification easily.

• Code should be modular where possible, if you are working on a new class then it is best if you put it in a new file.

• Bloated code may be necessary to add a certain feature, which means there has to be a judgement over whether the feature is worth having or not. You can help make this decision easier by making sure your code is modular.

• You are expected to help maintain the code that you add, meaning if there is a problem then you are likely to be approached in order to fix any issues, runtimes or bugs.

• Follow the stylesheet. Changing formatting with \red or other tags is not allowed. You must use span classes, which are defined in interface/stylesheet.dm.

Contribution guides
General	Hosting a server, Setting up git, Guide to working with tgstation as an upstream repository, Downloading the source code, Guide to contributing to the game, Reporting issues, Game resources category, Guide to changelogs
Database (MySQL)	Setting up the database, MySQL
Coding	Coding standards, Understanding SS13 code, SS13 for experienced programmers, Binary flags‎, Getting Your Pull Accepted, Text Formatting
Mapping	Guide to mapping, Map merger
Spriting	Guide to spriting
Wiki	Guide to contributing to the wiki, Wikicode, Maintainer Assignments