DEV Community: Emmanuel Pangan

5 WAYS TO ORGANIZE YOUR C# CODES IN GODOT

Emmanuel Pangan — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 07:49:31 +0000

Watch the full video on YouTube.

Here are the five things that I usually use to my game project, King and Queen, and you can too, if you want to organize your codes in Godot... or maybe not. Alright, let’s begin!

1️⃣ USE FOLDERS

You should be using folders to organize your codes as it separates each individual script in your game projects. OK, let’s take a look at my game project.

Here, the UI folder only holds all of the UI scripts that I use. No GameManagers or SceneManagers or anything like that included. Just pure UI scripts that controls the flow of my buttons, texts, and other user-interface tasks. Similarly, this Scene folder only holds the SceneManager as this script is only use to manage my scenes and nothing else.

Folders helps you to identify what scripts are related and group them relatively. Now, what if you want to break that rule?

Well, of course you can! Nobody’s stopping you. Just like I did in my Root folder, we see that my GameManager and LevelStarter are in the same folder.

And if we inspect them, they don’t have anything in common. GameManager is just to hold the states of the game. And LevelStarter calls the events when a level starts.

FYI, here’s my current folder structure of my game. And, folder structure is also used in the web industry, not just in gamedev.

2️⃣ USING OF NAMESPACES

Using of namespaces is similar to the folders. The only difference? Well, you can type the namespaces in your codes. So, similar to our folder structure, we can group our scripts with this syntax.

namespace YourNamespaceHere
{
        public class YourClassHere { }
}

And if you’re using the newer version of C#, you can do it like this.

namespace YourNamespaceHere;

public class YourClassHere { }

This is why in your first programming classes, you call the System namespace in your:

System.Console.WriteLine("Hello World");

Because the Console class is inside that namespace.

Lastly, the cool thing about this namespace is that you can create a library of classes. And it is generally a good idea to follow the folder structure for your namespaces as well. Alright, next!

3️⃣ CLASSES AND FUNCTIONS

We already know what classes and functions are in programming, right? Or, I hope you know. Now, we can take this further.

CLASSES

If you want to parent a class, we can actually, take this class, and put it inside the SceneManager class.

Before

public class LevelData { }

public class SceneManager { }

After

public class SceneManager
{
    public class LevelData { }
}

Now if we play this game, we can see that it works (watch the video). The only thing is, if we want to call this LevelData anywhere in our code, let’s say in the UIDebugger script.

public class UIDebugger
{
    public override void _Ready()
    {
        SceneManager.LevelData levelData = new();
    }    
}

We must start with our parent class which is SceneManager to call the LevelData. And please, keep in mind about your access modifier, these public and private keywords.

FUNCTIONS

Now, for the functions, we can actually put an another function here, inside our existing function. Just like how I parented my Shuffle function in SetCloudFrequency(). This is useful only when you want to call that function in that parent function. Because this child function is created inside this. If you want to know more about this CloudGenerator script, you can check my previous devlog here.

4️⃣ REGIONS

I actually use this #region a ton in my game projects. And this is why. Regions can help you to organize what functions and fields are related to each other with a comment. To use them, you can type it like this,

#region Your Region Name
// The rest of the codes.

doesn’t even matter if it has spaces or not. Then go to the end of the functions and fields of your choice to group and type:

#region Your Region Name
// The rest of the codes.
#endregion

Now, we can collapse or un-collapse this group of functions and fields we just grouped. Now, onto the last one.

5️⃣ BRACKETS

We all see them in our classes, functions, and if-statements, and etc., but we can actually take this further and use them in grouping codes as well. Just type this close and open curly brackets and you’re done!

{
    int apples = 1;
    int oranges = 2;
    int total = apple + oranges;
    GD.Print($"Total: {total}");
}

You can collapse or un-collapse these codes as well like regions. Now, this is the important part. Similar to our number 3 classes and functions, you can’t call this variable or function outside of these brackets, because, well, they are created inside these brackets,

{
    int apples = 1;
    int oranges = 2;
    int total = apple + oranges;
}
GD.Print($"Total: {total}"); // This throws an error.

So you can only use it like this:

public override void _Ready()
{
    {
        int totalFruits = TotalFruits(apples: 1, oranges: 2);
        GD.Print($"Total Fruits: {totalFruits}");
    }

    int myFruits = TotalFruits(apples: 5, oranges: 10);
    GD.Print($"My Fruits: {myFruits}");
}

private int TotalFruits(int apples, int oranges)
{
    int total = apples + oranges;
    return total;
}

Now it’s up to you if you want to organize your codes like this or not. It's 100% COMPLETELY OPTIONAL to do so!

Thanks for reading! 📖

Making free programming blogs like this takes a long time of planning, writing, and editing. You can help me through support by: Buying me a Ko-fi ☕.

Check out my YouTube channel for more coding tutorials. Happy coding everyone! 🧡

How to Avoid Multiple Nested If-Else Statements Using Guard Clause

Emmanuel Pangan — Tue, 23 Jan 2024 10:41:47 +0000

Watch the full video on YouTube.

Guard Clause is a nice trick to reduce nested if statements in your codes.

Let’s say we have this rudimentary UserLogIn. Our eyes will look up and down constantly just to read this whole code.

private static void UserLogIn(bool hasUsername, bool hasPassword, bool isAdmin)
{
    if (hasUsername)
    {
        Console.WriteLine("Username");
        if (hasPassword)
        {
            Console.WriteLine("Password");
            if (isAdmin)
            {
                GoToAdminPage();
            }

            else
            {
                GoToWelcomePage();
            }
        }

        else
        {
            Console.WriteLine("No Password Found.");
        }
    }

    else
    {
        Console.WriteLine("No Username Found.");
    }
}

Now, to simplify this, we can:

Add a ! here beside this hasUsername, and move this whole block outside, and put this line beneath our new if statement. While deleting the last else. And add a return.

if (!hasUsername)
{
    Console.WriteLine("No Username Found.");
    return;
}

Console.WriteLine("Username");
// Whole block goes here.

In this way, we can exit our method far more quickly while checking if our hasUsernameis false or not. This way, our code is far cleaner and easier to read.

Now, we can also do the same with the other nested if statements.

if (!hasPassword)
{
    Console.WriteLine("No Password Found.");
    return;
}

Console.WriteLine("Password");
if (!isAdmin)
{
    GoToWelcomePage();
    return;
}

GoToAdminPage();

And when debug, we can see that it really works.

Alternatively, instead of adding a return here, we can throw our own Exception.

if (!hasUsername)
{
    throw new Exception("No Username Found");
}

Console.WriteLine("Username");
if (!hasPassword)
{
    throw new Exception("No Password Found");
}

Console.WriteLine("Password");

But for Unity users, this will cause a headache to your game if used for gameplays, and other intensive mechanics, so this is not recommended.

And there you have it, we made this whole if-else statement from unreadable mess into a clean, and readable code.

Here's the final code you can view on GitHub Gist.

Thanks for reading! 📖

Making free programming blogs like this takes a long time of planning, writing, and editing. You can help me through support by: Buying me a Ko-fi ☕.

Check out my YouTube channel for more coding tutorials. Happy coding everyone! 🧡

How to Use While Loop in C# for Beginners

Emmanuel Pangan — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 04:20:34 +0000

Watch the full video on YouTube.

While loop repeats the code while its condition is true. And it consists of...

A while, parentheses and a condition. And curly brackets. With codes that will run on a loop ‘til the condition is false.

while (condition)
{
    // Codes that will run on a loop.
}

With this example:

// While loop repeats the code while its condition is TRUE.
double tuitionFee = 5000;

while (tuitionFee > 0)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Tuition Fee:\n{tuitionFee}");
    Console.WriteLine("Please enter your new payment:");
    double payment = double.Parse(Console.ReadLine());

    // Subtract the payment from the tuition fee.
    tuitionFee -= payment;
}

Console.WriteLine("Your tuition fee is now fully paid.");

While the tuition fee is greater than zero, it will continue to ask for your payment. And when fully paid, it will exit the while loop and displays:

💭 So, how does this work exactly?

First, we initialize the tuitionFee to have a value of 5000.
Next, we ask if our tuitionFee is greater than zero. If it is, then we enter the loop.
Inside the loop, we get the payment from the user, and subtract it to the tuitionFee.
And this condition and codes inside these curly brackets would repeat again and again, until this tuitionFee reaches zero or negative.

⏫ Add Keywords to Jump the Loop

You can also use keywords to make this loop more interesting.

You can use the continue keyword to skip the rest of the codes. With this condition:

// If payment is zero or negative.
if (payment <= 0)
{
    // Skip the rest of the codes.
    continue;
}

First, we ask if the payment is less than or equals to 0, and if it is, we will skip the rest of the codes, below, to avoid getting zero or negative payments from the user.

// While loop repeats the code while its condition is TRUE.
double tuitionFee = 5000;

while (tuitionFee > 0)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Tuition Fee:\n{tuitionFee}");
    Console.WriteLine("Please enter your new payment:");
    double payment = double.Parse(Console.ReadLine());

    // If payment is zero or negative.
    if (payment <= 0)
    {
        // Skip the rest of the codes.
        continue;
    }

    // Subtract the payment from the tuition fee.
    tuitionFee -= payment;
}

Console.WriteLine("Your tuition fee is now fully paid.");

Another thing is the break keyword to stop the loop immediately.

// If payment is greater than the tuition fee.
if (payment > tuitionFee)
{
    break;
}

We can ask if the user’s payment is greater than the tuition fee. Then if it’s true, we will stop and exit the loop.

// While loop repeats the code while its condition is TRUE.
double tuitionFee = 5000;

while (tuitionFee > 0)
{
    Console.WriteLine($"Tuition Fee:\n{tuitionFee}");
    Console.WriteLine("Please enter your new payment:");
    double payment = double.Parse(Console.ReadLine());

    // If payment is zero or negative.
    if (payment <= 0)
    {
        // Skip the rest of the codes.
        continue;
    }

    // If payment is greater than the tuition fee.
    if (payment > tuitionFee)
    {
        break;
    }

    // Subtract the payment from the tuition fee.
    tuitionFee -= payment;
}

Console.WriteLine("Your tuition fee is now fully paid.");

But displaying nothing is kind of awkward, so, we can display the user’s change instead:

// If payment is greater than the tuition fee.
if (payment > tuitionFee)
{
    // Get the change.
    double change = payment - tuitionFee;
    Console.WriteLine($"Your change is:\n{change}");
    tuitionFee = 0;
    break;
}

Here's the final code you can view on GitHub Gist.

Thanks for reading! 📖

Check out my YouTube channel for more coding tutorials. Happy coding everyone! 🧡

Source(s):
Microsoft's documentation on While Loops
Microsoft's documentation on Continue keyword
Microsoft's documentation on Break keyword

What are the Basics of Comments in C#

Emmanuel Pangan — Thu, 16 Nov 2023 04:19:06 +0000

Watch the full video on YouTube.

1️⃣ Single-line Comment

It is easy to write a Single-line comment.👩‍💻

Just type two fore-slash or forward slashes(/). And you can write whatever you want. But, the lines above and below are unaffected.

// Single-line Comment
Console.WriteLine("Above");
// Whatever you want.
Console.WriteLine("Below");

You can also add it beside the code, or on top to add a short description.

// Calculates the next leap year.
var nextLeapYear = DateTime.Now.AddYears(4); // Description here.

There’s no rule to add space between fore-slash and the comment, but this is more readable:

// Calculates the next leap year.

than this:

//Calculates the next leap year.

2️⃣ Multi-line Comment

If a Single-line comment isn’t enough:

// TODO: 1. Optimize this code. 2. Google or go to StackOverflow. 3. Copy-paste the code. 4. Refactor again.

Try Multi-line comments. Type fore-slash then asterisk(*), and press Enter. You can end this by typing a closing fore-slash.

/*
 * Multi
 * Line
 * Comment
 */

Pretty useful for TODO lists like for the example earlier.

/*
 * TODO: 
 * 1. Optimize this code. 
 * 2. Google or go to StackOverflow. 
 * 3. Copy-paste the code. 
 * 4. Refactor again.
 */

🧱 Blocks of code: Commenting and Uncommenting

Press CTRL + K + C to comment your codes. It’s really handy when you have a huge chunk of code like this one:

//public double GetFruitPrice(string fruitName)
//{
//    const int FRUIT_NAME_NOT_FOUND = -1;
//    switch (fruitName)
//    {
//        case "Apple":
//            return 5.99;
//        case "Banana":
//            return 3.99;
//        case "Grapes":
//            return 7.99;
//    }
//    return FRUIT_NAME_NOT_FOUND;
//}

Press CTRL + K + U to uncomment:

public double GetFruitPrice(string fruitName)
{
    const int FRUIT_NAME_NOT_FOUND = -1;
    switch (fruitName)
    {
        case "Apple":
            return 5.99;
        case "Banana":
            return 3.99;
        case "Grapes":
            return 7.99;
    }
    return FRUIT_NAME_NOT_FOUND;
}

Just remember to use comments sparingly because it can produce dead codes.

Here's the final code you can view on GitHub Gist.

And here's the code for commenting and uncommenting that's also available on GitHub Gist

Thanks for reading! 📖

Check out my YouTube channel for more coding tutorials. Happy coding everyone! 🧡

Source(s):
Microsoft's documentation about comments

How to Make an Array in C# for Beginners

Emmanuel Pangan — Sun, 22 Oct 2023 11:18:39 +0000

Watch the full video on YouTube.

Hello aspiring developers! 👨‍💻 So you're probably wondering how can you sort this variable mess, after maybe 10 or more added:

// Variables like this becomes messy.
string student1 = "John";
string student2 = "Michael";
string student3 = "Petra";

Here's how:

Just add the type and square brackets beside. Name it. Then put new and the type, then add its length inside these brackets.

// To solve this, you can make an array.
string[] students = new string[3];

And what is length you ask?

And you can initialize this by adding each value based on index.

// To solve this, you can make an array.
string[] students = new string[3];
students[0] = "John";
students[1] = "Michael";
students[2] = "Petra";

Or, you can also initialize this in one go, by undoing the initialize values before. And remove the new, the type, and the length to not worry on how many values you will put inside.

Add a pair of curly braces, then put the values inside, each separated by a comma. Here you go! Much compact code using arrays. 😉

// To solve this, you can make an array.
string[] students = { "John", "Michael", "Petra" };

Calling a value in an Array

To call a value inside an array, we can use their index. Starting from 0 ‘til the array’s length minus one.

Console.WriteLine("Student Name: " + students[students.Length - 1]);

You can also use other types aside from string.

Like int:

// You can also use other types aside from string.
int[] ages = new int[3];
ages[0] = 12;
ages[1] = 17;
ages[2] = 24;

And double:

double[] grades = new double[3];
grades[0] = 75.0;
grades[1] = 80.5;
grades[2] = 97.1;

Here's the final code you can view on GitHub Gist.

Thanks for reading! 📖

Check out my YouTube channel for more coding tutorials. Happy coding everyone! 🧡

Source(s):
Microsoft's documentation on C# Arrays

How to Download and Install Visual Studio 2022 in Windows 10

Emmanuel Pangan — Sat, 14 Oct 2023 10:44:30 +0000

Here's a step-by-step guide on downloading, installing, and setting up your Visual Studio 2022 on your Windows 10 😉

Watch the full video on YouTube.

Download and Install your Visual Studio 2022

Head over to visualstudio.microsoft.com/downloads.
Go to Community version and click Free Download.
Open the Visual Studio Installer and click Continue.
Wait till the downloads are finished.
Open the Visual Studio 2022.
Uncheck the ASP.NET and web development and Azure development.
Check .Net desktop development, then click Install.
Wait till it finish downloading. Though, this could take a few hours. Time to sip some Java coffee~ ☕
After waiting, click Launch to launch your Visual Studio 2022.

And here's a bonus guide on how to setup your Visual Studio 2022 for basic C# programming 😉

Setting up your Visual Studio 2022

You can skip signing in, or sign in with your Microsoft account.
For color themes, pick any of your choosing and click Start Visual Studio.
Wait for the setup to finish, and click the Create a new project button.
Pick the very first Console App, and click Next.
For Project name, you can name it anything you want. And click the ... to choose the location for your project.
Take note, both .NET 6.0 (Long Term Support) and .NET 7.0(Standard Term Support) are still supported (as of this writing). Long Term Support just means it will still receive updates, while the Standard Term Support is the latest version.
Click the Create button, and it will open your Visual Studio 2022.
Then click the green Run button.

And congratulations you just run your first C# app 🥳

Check out my YouTube channel for more coding tutorials. Happy coding everyone! 🧡