Jethro's Braindump

Game API Design

tags
Software Engineering

Core Tenets from Handmade (NO_ITEM_DATA:handmade_how_to_write_better)

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

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