- Plug and Play (will not interfere with existing log systems)
- Time-formatted logging both inside of GameMaker and to files
- Highlight any given log output
- Infinite number of simultaneous individual log files as desired
- Supports the conversion of data types as expected with
show_debug_message() - Highly customizable
- Import the current release package from the Releases Tab into your project.
- You're ready to log anything!
The easy log script is set up in an object-oriented style, meaning that you can create new instances of logs anytime.
In it's most basic use-case, you can create a globally accessible instance of goodLog by typing:
global.myLog = new goodLog();
Now, any time you want to log something:
global.myLog.log("This is my first log!");
By default, this will be output into your GameMaker console as well as to a file called log.txt in your game's user directory. The expected output would look something like:
[05/24/2022 10:27:03] This is my first log!
You can also highlight any log by giving it a title! As an example, a modification to our initial log could look like:
global.myLog.log("This is my first log!", "First Log!");
and would output:
--------------------First Log!--------------------
[05/24/2022 10:30:05] This is my first log!
--------------------------------------------------
As shown in the previous section, you can create instances of goodLog - as many as you want, in fact! We can use this to do some awesome things - like write out to individual files for separate instances, name each individual log, and customize highlighted output.
Let's say we have two objects - in both object's Create Event's we'll create a new goodLog instance called "myLog".
Note:
new goodLog accepts two arguments:
new goodLog([log file, default "log.txt"], [output, default True to write out to a file]);
Object 1:
myLog = new goodLog("obj1.txt");
myLog.log("Hello World!");
Object 2:
myLog = new goodLog("obj2.txt");
myLog.log("Hello World, again!");
Now both of these objects write to their defined output text file (as well as the GM console) without overlapping each other. We can actually disable logging to a file when creating our new goodLog instance by using the arguments it accepts:
myLog = new goodLog("", false);
You can also write to the same log that another instance of goodLog is using without any issue (for example, both writing to "obj1.txt") - but you may want to set the title of the goodLog instance!
To set the title of the log, you'd do something like this:
myLog = new goodLog("log1.txt");
myLog.config.logTitle = "Specific Title";
myLog.log("This is my first log!");
Which would prepend the title to any log line using this instance of goodLog like:
[05/24/2022 10:27:03] Specific Title: This is my first log!
You can adjust the title of any goodLog instance by changing [goodLog Instance].config.logTitle at any time.
But there are more properties to explore that can be controlled per goodLog instance!
Each of these can be accessed and modified by typing [goodLog Instance].config.[property name]
| Property | Default | What does it do? |
|---|---|---|
| logTitle | none | defines the name of the log within the entry |
| toFile | true | defines whether or not to output to a file |
| outputFile | "log.txt" | defines the file to log to (also set during instance creation) |
| silent | false | if set to true, will disable output to the GM console |
| inGameLog | false | if set to true, will save log output to the [goodLog Instance].logged array for your use in-game |
| sepChar | "-" | the character to use in separating highlighted messages from regular ones |
| sepLength | 50 | the number of sepChar's used to border highlighted messages |
| nlChar | "\n" | the character to denote new lines |
As mentioned in the table, you can save logs in-game by turning on [goodLog Instance].config.inGameLog = true; this will write all entries to that instance (while inGameLog is set to true) to an array, accessible with [goodLog Instance].logged
If there are contributions you'd like to make to this project - open a pull request here!
Potential Improvements you could work on:
- Easily customizable date formatting, i.e.
[goodLog Instance].config.timeFormat = "DD/MM/YY HH:mm:SS - ???