Tools, other Objects and Helpers - Grisgram/gml-raptor GitHub Wiki
Beside all the subsystems and objects in raptor, as in any other platform, there are also some functions, scripts, and other helpers that can make your life easier.
I want to encourage you to take a look into the Tools folder of the project template inside the _gml_raptor_ folder.
Almost all of the utils have a quite comprehensive File Comment Header at the top explaining what the class is used for.
To name the most useful contents of the Tools folder, here is a list of the most important helpers in alphabetical order, not in order of their importance:
| Audio | Background music, ambience, ui, sounds and voice channels |
| Broadcasting | A message broadcasting system to track your achievements or to send out anything to the game |
Buffers |
Buffer management, encrypting, hex-dumps for debugging and more |
| CanvasDrawer | A wrapper object for the Canvas library by @tabularelf which draws a Canvas as if it were a sprite |
| Coordinate Helpers | A set of coordinate calculation classes for 2D, 3D and 4D vectors |
| Eye | The Eye is an extremely useful object for camera control and multi-layer parallax scrolling effects in your game |
| File Access (Sync/Async) | A group of very handy helpers to load/save files with high performance due to buffer usage. This is one of the most important bases for the Savegame system. |
LayerManagerTileScanner
|
Two utility classes that help you batch-set layer visibility of entire groups, change background color, scan tile layers, provide detailled tile information and allow you to modify tile layers at will |
LinqArray |
If you know C#, then you know Linq. This is an array implementation that lets you work with methods like .Where(..).Skip(2).Select(...) as you know it from the .net world |
| ListPool | A simple list extension with a process_all method. It's the base for the StateMachine and Animation pools of raptor
|
| Little Helpers | A group of functions that did not fit anywhere else, like is_any_of(..), is_between(..) and similar micro functions |
| ObjectPool | Push/Pull instances instead of creating and destroying them |
PopupManager |
A basic helper system for overlays and popups |
RingBuffer |
A standard RingBuffer (wikipedia link) implementation, that keeps the last n entries of anything. Easy to use, very performant |
SpriteDim |
var dims = new SpriteDim(sprite_index);A small utility class, that reads the dimensions and nine-slice information from a sprite_index, fail-safe with defaults if anything does not exist |
Strings |
String helper functions, like sprintf, starts_with, ends_with, skip_start, skip_end and many more |
Structs |
Some struct enhancements for nested structs, like set_by_path, get_by_path, integrate, join... |
| TileScanner | A powerful tool for modifying and analyzing tile layers, with a delta-mechanism to save and restore modified maps |
| Unit Testing | A complete unit testing suite for your data classes. See how you can test your code! |