Knowledge requirements

This document is best read with a basic understanding of...

• object-oriented programming
• C#
• Unity-specific concepts like UnityEngine and UnityEditor attributes

Overview

This document is inspired by the Google Developer Documentation Style Guide word list.

👍 denotes recommended or correct examples and usually offers alternatives to...
👎 which denotes not recommended or incorrect usages

Actor

Runtime object consisting of ActorData and an ActorController representing said data in-game.

• 👍 "After a Stage is loaded, an Actor instance is created for each Slot and filled with the relevant ActorData specified in that Story."
• 👎 "You can change the sprite of the Arin-Actor in Unity." (Incorrect, as ActorData is actually being referenced here.)

ActorData

A ScriptableObject representing all data for a character like Arin, Dan or Tutorial Boy (including sprites, info like age, name, shouts and color of dialogue box when speaking).

• 👍 "You can change the sprite of Arin inside his ActorData object in Unity."

[…]Component Suffix for Scripts

Scripts in our game can have the Component-suffix.

This suffix must only be used to indicate, that the Script ending in Component is a bridge between Unity and an otherwise Unity-independent class.

• 👍 ActionDecoder -> ActionDecoderComponent
• 👍 NarrativeScriptPlaylist -> NarrativeScriptPlaylistComponent

To make automated testing easy and reliable, we strive to have as much code as possible be independent of Unity.
If we need to interact with Unity-specifics inside our custom code, a second wrapper-class should be created, containing the suffix Component in its name.

Classes that don't wrap a Unity-independent class, should instead use nominalized verbs.

• 👍 TextParser, ImageHighlight, MenuOpener
• 👎 TextParsingComponent, ImageHighlightComponent, MenuToggleComponent (as they have no underlying Unity-independent class)

Evidence

A ScriptableObject representing all data for a character like Stolen Dinos, Jory Sr's Letter (including sprites or info like name and description text).

• 👍 "You can change the sprite of Jory Sr's Letter inside the Evidence object in Unity."

Scene

A Unity scene.

• 👍 "When the user has finished the game, we'll load the Credits scene so all other objects are destroyed."
• 👎 "A BGScene consists of a background and slots for Actors." (Incorrect, as Stage should be used here.)

Slot

Can also be called Actor Slot.

A position inside a Stage that can be filled with an Actor.

• 👍 "The TMPHCourt Stage has three slots: Defense, Prosecution and Witness"

Script

Files containing C# code.

• 👍 "We have tests for scripts which are fairly simple and tests for scenes that require a bigger setup."
• 👎 "The narrative of our game is controlled via Inky Scripts." (Incorrect, as Story is actually being referenced here.)

Stage

A combination of background image and slots for Actors.

• 👍 "The new 10 Minute Power Hour Stage is not ready yet, we still need to update the position of the Slots"

Story

.JSON or .INK files for Inkle's Scripting Language used to control the narrative inside the game.

• 👍 "To easily test this new functionality, I have created a simple two-line Story you can find in the Tests folder."