Preprocessor Defines

Space Station 14 and Robust make decent use of C# Preprocessor Directives for various things. For this document we’re talking about #if and friends, to conditionally compile code differently based on specific settings.

This document aims to describe all preprocessor defines (what you can put in #if) declared by Robust.

Most Common

  • DEBUG: The game should be compiled with debug checks like DebugTools.Assert() enabled.
  • TOOLS: The game should be compiled with development tools enabled.
  • RELEASE: The game is being compiled on the Release build configuration. You generally should not need to check this, instead opt to check for DEBUG and TOOLS where applicable.

The Gnarly Ones

You generally shouldn’t need to look at these for content development, these are more engine stuff.

  • FULL_RELEASE: Whether we are currently building for release that will be played by users. This is necessary to set up some code such as resources correctly in the final build.
  • DEVELOPMENT: The opposite of FULL_RELEASE. Always true for local development, false for published releases.
  • WINDOWS/UNIX/LINUX/MACOS: Whether we are compiling for specific platforms. In a lot of cases, OperatingSystem.IsX() checks at runtime are used instead, as conditional compilation can be convenient.
  • EXCEPTION_TOLERANCE: Make the game more crash-resilient by inserting try-catch everywhere. The game is intentionally fragile on debug to encourage people to fix their bugs more.
  • CLIENT_SCRIPTING: Whether to enable client-side C# Interactive. This is disabled for release builds due to security and size concerns.
  • USE_SYSTEM_SQLITE: Whether to use the system’s SQLite lib instead of the built-in e_sqlite lib. Used for FreeBSD.

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