HTML5 to GMS 2 (organizing code)

[Darth Binary 1010]

Hey all, I've been working with HTML5 for over a year now, and now since I'm more interested in making mobile educational games, I wanted to try a game engine that will give me more flexibility and speed.

I've only went through ~4 GMS 2 tutorials so far, and I'm starting to think about how confusing things would get since each object has their own separate code page, with multiple tabs based on what you need it to do. I feel like I would get lost quickly once the project gets complicated and it would be very hard for someone to look at my code and understand what is happening quickly.

With HTML5, the game room can be read like a book and is very easy to understand. Every object has methods that just sit there and are only called in the game room, the game room just has one update loop for everything, and a simple click on the method brings me right into the object to inspect the code more.

So I'm wondering how you guys handle maneuvering around your project once things get complex, like forgetting where you actually put a method. Yes there's the search function, but I often can't remember the names of everything. Any advice here?

 

[Coded Games]

Well first of all, methods don't exist in GML, yet. The closest thing we have is scripts.

I personally would suggest learning what all of the objects events are and when they are called. The events are basically the methods you can write and are called automatically by the engine.

The ways to organize your code is really up to you. Some people like breaking basically all of their code into scripts and only have object events call run scripts. Some people like leaving most of their code in object events. Some people like writing the vast majority of their code in the step event over using other equivalent events. It's really up to you and definitely has a learning curve when you come from prior programming experience.