brave whale
Hi. I'm programming something where there are 4 rooms, in a 2x2 grid, which can be rearranged like tiles or something of the sort. I would also need to save several pieces of information about each room and the objects within them.
I've never used any ds_* commands before, so this would be a big learning experience, but would 2d arrays hypothetically be easier to work with? Is there a simplified reason to use ds_grid_* over 2d arrays?
Thanks!
raven pilot
Hi. I'm programming something where there are 4 rooms, in a 2x2 grid, which can ...
The only benefit I'd probably give to ds_grids, is if every single value you're storing is just a number or a string
Because you can reasonably do operations on them much faster than a 2D array
Otherwise, I'd just use a 2D array
ds_grids don't exactly have a clean way of serializing/deserializing data (outside of the write/read functions, which even despite working okay a lot of the time, I still am skeptical of just letting GM handle that)
2D arrays also are just arrays
So you also get GC benefits from that too
No need to manage the 2D array cleanup yourself
brave whale
GC being garbage collection, I'm guessing? Also, grateful for the informative response!!
raven pilot
Yes
raven pilot
The only benefit I'd probably give to `ds_grids`, is if every single value you'r...
I say this in particular with numbers and strings
Because most of ds_grids functions do mainly apply operations on numbers
So if you're storing instance data or structs
Or anything else
Most of them are practically worthless
Arrays also do have a lot of other functionality built in too, for whatever your needs might be
brave whale
Very good to know. That's probably why I haven't seen many tutorials (so far) using them, since arrays can do the job in a different but more manageable way.
bleak elk