Game API Design

tags

Software Engineering

Core Tenets from Handmade (Handmade 2019)

Maximize portability

• Write in C99 if possible
• Try to avoid:
  • compiler extensions
• Do:
  • Use the C standard library
  • Undef macros that should not be exposed to the end user
  • Prefix names to avoid collisions
  • Write the interface in C

Be easy to build

• Don’t use a custom build system
• Make build system optional
• Allow people to compile from source
• Minimize dependencies
• don’t allocate memory or handle resources for the user
• be const correct
• always ask for the size of buffers

Be easy to integrate

• Consider error codes or result structs that must be handled at runtime
• Keep error code/reason in struct

  ParsePNGFileResult result = ParsePNGFile(png_file_data);
  if (result.error) { /* handle error */ }

Bibliography

Handmade. 2019. “How to Write Better (Game) Libraries | Handmade.Network Wiki.”