Introduction

While I was working on several projects utilizing Adobe’s Flex SDK for Flash, I found myself growing wistful for the days of C-style macros and defines.  In other words, a pre-processor.  Why?

Every project usually hits a point where your build diverges as you factor in different levels of support or options.  In other words, you want multiple builds for different runtime options.  For example, let’s consider the simplest option of having two builds: a debug and a release version.  The debug version could be anything from your normal program plus a smattering of simple trace log checkpoint to an entire debug sub-system which handles various testing scenarios.  While it isn’t harmless to leave such things lying around in a final build, there are times when you might want to strip them out.  You don’t want this code in the release version because it would allow cheating (since I am talking about game development) or you are trying to cut down the overall size of your binaries by excluding unused features.

Let’s wrap it up with an even more concrete example:  My last game had an extensive debugging GUI that I wrote for testing level changes.

A screenshot of the debug UI for Dit Dah's game Legend of Kalevala.

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