Ruby Scripting

[kyonides]

Arrays, Blocks & Obscure Practices

Here's an awful example that shows us what can be done but should NEVER take place. You would only need to use a code like the following one:

Code:

$game_party.actors.map do |actor|
  actor.age
end.max

What it does wrong is calling a second method not inside but outside of the block as the next logical step to take once the block finishes executing itself.

Yes, it's still possible to call a method at the end of such a block but it's a bad practice. Some people would write it like this instead:

Code:

$game_party.actors.map { |actor|
  actor.age
}.max

It's also obscure for sure. The best idea would be to do something totally different and a lot simpler than any of those 2 very similar options.


Valid Option No. 1
Use 2 lines of code instead

Code:

list = $game_party.actors.map {|actor| actor.age }
list.max

This one is the quickest way to obtain the maximum value in no time and is as valid as the following one.

Valid Option No. 2
Create a specific method and call it from the original one

Code:

def actors_ages
  $game_party.actors.map {|actor| actor.age }
end

def find_max_age
  actors_ages.max
end

As you can see both options are clean and easily readable. Another advantage is that it will only throw an error if and only if there's an empty actor or the @actors array's original contents have been replaced by improper ones.

By the way, this example is only valid for RMXP because the @actors array contain actual actors. Starting RMVX they simply include Actor ID's so you would need to convert them to actors first and then extract their ages as a second step that's unavoidable.

Use $game_party.members or replace @actors with members.

If you ever paid attention to RMVX ACE default scripts, you might have noticed by now that they almost always rely on the second valid option I exposed above. Well, it's quite useful and can be called from pretty much anywhere without exposing it in an "illegal" way based on OOP principles.

And yes, in Ruby it is quite normal to encapsulate methods and create tons of wrappers for methods belonging to other objects. Game_Party class is a good example of it.