Naming Conventions and Structure
Naming convention & structuring are both useful methods for organizing & remembering file-names, folder locations & what should go where.
Contents
Naming Convention
Lowercase vs. Uppercase vs. Mixed-case
When naming your files & game assets, you should try to make it as simple as possible. I recommend using lowercase only because it saves a lot of time, when you aren't having to mess around pressing the shift key or toggling the caps lock key on & off every two seconds.
this is far quicker to type than: This, Because This Requires Me To Keep Reaching Over With My Right Hand To Press The Shift Key. Now on the other hand: THIS IS REALLY HORRIBLE TO READ & STILL REQUIRES ME TO KEEP HOLD OF THE SHIFT KEY OR TOGGLE THE CAPS LOCK KEY ON.
Whitespace
Using whitespace between words is ok in this modern day & age, but I do recommend joining your file-names & object names together with dashes-or_underscores_like-so. Why, you ask? Well it stems from a long, long time ago, in a system, far, far away, when it was common practice to join words together with underscores & dashes; mainly to access things via command line, or whatever. A lot of people still name things like this out of habit, but it's actually just good practice to name things in this way & is more likely to be accepted by various programs.
Prefixes
Prefixes are a great way for quickly determining where something belongs, what it is for, or what it is linked to. In Visionaire Studio I tend to name things like, so: obj_object-name, anim_anim-name, act_action-name, v_value-name, cond_condition-name etc. For scenes I tend to use a number based prefix like, so: 001-001, which would be chapter 1, scene 1. I also tend to add these numbers in (brackets) at the end of certain objects & animations so that I know that, that specific object/animation is only to be used in that specific scene/chapter.
Separators
Technically Visionaire Studio has no separators but you can easily create headers/separators in the object lists by creating an object/script/animation etc, naming it something like -- something -- & leaving the object, scene etc blank. For scene separators/headers I recommend creating them as a menu scene & for scripts I recommend setting them as execution scripts inside of the scripts properties tab.
Here's a few examples of what I use as separators/headers... -- menu --, -- scene --, -- playable_character --, -- npc --, -- misc --, etcetera...
Folder Structure
Folder structure is just as important as name convention as it can mean the difference between spending ages searching for a specific file, instead of simply browsing to the most logical place. A good name convention is also required for a good folder structure.
Here's a quick example of how I might organize my game/project:
| root (contains the .ved & various sub-folders) |
|
|
