Along with naming, formatting helps reduce guesswork and improves code clarity. By following a standardized style guide, code reviews become less about how the code looks and more about what it does.

Aim to personalize the way your team will format the code. Consider each of the following code formatting suggestions when setting up your Unity style guide. You can choose to omit, expand, or modify these sample rules to fit your team’s needs.

In all cases, reflect on how your team will implement each formatting rule, and then have everyone apply it uniformly. Refer back to your team’s style guide to resolve any discrepancies. The less you think about formatting, the more productively – and creatively – you can work.

Let’s take a look at some formatting guidelines.

A property provides a flexible mechanism to read, write, or compute class values. Properties behave as if they’re public member variables, but in fact they are special methods called accessors.

Each property has a get and set method to access a private field, called a backing field. This way, the property encapsulates the data, hiding it from unwanted changes by the user or external objects. The “getter” and “setter” each have their own access modifier, allowing your property to be read-write, read-only, or write-only.

You can also use the accessors to validate or convert the data (e.g., to verify that the data fits your preferred format or changes a value to a particular unit).

The syntax for properties can vary, so your style guide should define how to format them. See the following examples for tips on how to keep properties consistent in your code.

Use expression-bodied properties for single-line, read-only properties (=>): This returns the private backing field.

Everything else uses the expression-bodied { get; set; } syntax: If you just want to expose a public property without specifying a backing field, use the auto-implemented property.

Apply the expression-bodied syntax for the set and get accessors. Remember to make the “setter” private if you don’t want to provide write access. Align the closing with the opening brace for multiline code blocks.

Script serialization is the automatic process of transforming data structures or object states into a format that Unity can store and reconstruct later. For performance reasons, Unity handles serialization differently than in other programming environments.

Serialized fields appear in the Inspector, but you cannot serialize static, constant, or read-only fields. They must be either public or tagged with the [SerializeField] attribute. Unity only serializes certain field types, so refer to the documentation for the complete set of serialization rules.

Observe these basic guidelines when working with serialized fields:

• Use the [SerializeField] attribute: The SerializeField attribute can work with private or protected variables to make them appear in the Inspector. This encapsulates the data better than marking the variable public, and prevents an external object from overwriting its values.
• Use the Range attribute to set minimum and maximum values: The [Range(min, max)] attribute is handy if you want to limit what the user can assign to a numeric field. It also conveniently represents the field as a slider in the Inspector.
• Group data in serializable classes or structs to clean up the Inspector: Define a public class or struct and mark it with the [Serializable] attribute. Define public variables for each type you want to expose in the Inspector.

Reference this serializable class from another class. The resulting variables appear within collapsible units in the Inspector.

There are two common indentation styles in C#:

• The Allman style, also known as the BSD style (from BSD Unix), places the opening curly braces on a new line.
• The K&R style, or “one true brace style,” keeps the opening brace on the same line as the previous header.

There are variations on these indentation styles as well. The examples in this guide use the Allman style from the Microsoft framework design guidelines. Regardless of which one you choose as a team, make sure that everyone follows the same indentation and brace style. You can also try the tips in the following sections.

The indentation is typically two or four spaces. Get everyone on your team to agree on a setting in your Editor preferences without igniting a tabs versus spaces flame war.

In Visual Studio for Windows, navigate to Tools > Options > Text Editor > C# > Tabs.

In Visual Studio for Mac, navigate to Preferences > Source Code > C# Source Code. Select the Text Style to adjust the settings.

Note: Visual Studio provides the option to convert tabs to spaces.

Don’t omit braces – not even for single-line statements. Braces increase consistency, which makes your code easier to read and maintain. In this example, the braces clearly separate the action, DoSomething, from the loop.

If you need to add a Debug line or run DoSomethingElse later on, the braces will already be in place. Keeping the clause on a separate line enables you to simply add a breakpoint.

Don’t remove braces from nested multiline statements. Removing braces in this case won’t throw an error, but will likely cause confusion. Apply braces for clarity, even if they’re optional.

Formatting can vary, so document your team preferences in your style guide and standardize your switch statements accordingly.

Here is one example of indenting the case statements.

Something as simple as spacing can enhance your code’s appearance onscreen. While personal formatting preferences can vary, consider the suggestions below to improve readability.

Add spaces to decrease code density. The extra whitespace gives the sense of visual separation between parts of a line.

Use a single space after a comma between function arguments.

Don’t add a space after the parenthesis and function arguments.

Don’t use spaces between a function name and parenthesis.

As much as possible, avoid spaces inside brackets.

Use a single space before flow control conditions and add a space between the flow comparison operator and parentheses.

Use a single space before and after comparison operators.

Keep lines short and consider horizontal whitespace. Decide on a standard line width (80–120 characters), and break a long line into smaller statements rather than letting it overflow.

As discussed earlier, try to maintain indentation/hierarchy. Indenting your code can increase legibility.

Don’t use column alignment unless it’s required for readability. While this type of spacing aligns the variables, it can complicate pairing the type with the name.

Column alignment, however, can be useful for bitwise expressions or structs with a lot of data. Just be aware that it might create more work for you to maintain the column alignment as you add more items. Some auto-formatters might also change which part of the column gets aligned.

You can use vertical spacing to your advantage as well. Keep related parts of the script together and use blank lines to your advantage. Try the following to organize your code from top to bottom:

• Group dependent or similar methods together: Code needs to be logical and coherent. Keep methods that do the same thing next to one another, so that someone reading your logic doesn’t have to jump around the file.
• Use the vertical whitespace to separate distinct parts of your class: For example, you can add two blank lines between:
  • Variable declarations and methods
  • Classes and interfaces
  • if-then-else blocks (if it helps readability)

Keep this to a minimum, and if possible, track it in your style guide.

Using regions in your code

The #region directive enables you to collapse and hide sections of code in C# files, making large files more manageable and easier to read.

However, if you follow the general advice for classes from this guide, your class size should be manageable and the #region directive superfluous. Break your code into smaller classes instead of hiding code blocks behind regions. You will be less inclined to add a region if the source file is short.

Note: Many developers consider regions to be code smells or anti-patterns. Decide as a team on which side of the debate you fall.

Don’t despair if these formatting rules seem overwhelming. Modern IDEs make it efficient to set up and enforce them. You can create a template of formatting rules and then convert your project files at once.

To set up formatting rules for the script Editor: 

• In Visual Studio for Windows, navigate to Tools > Options, then locate Text Editor > C# > Code Style Formatting.
  • Use the settings to modify the General, Indentation, New Lines, Spacing, and Wrapping options.
• In Visual Studio for Mac, select Visual Studio > Preferences, then navigate to Source Code > Code Formatting > C# Source Code.
  • Select the Policy at the top, then go to the Text Style tab. In the C# Format tab, adjust the Indentation, New Lines, Spacing, and Wrapping settings.

To force your script file to conform to the style guide:

• In Visual Studio for Windows, go to Edit > Advanced > Format Document (Ctrl + K, Ctrl + D hotkey chord). If you want to only format whitespaces and tab alignment, you can also use Run Code Cleanup (Ctrl + K , Ctrl + E) at the bottom of the Editor.
• In Visual Studio for Mac, go to Edit > Format Document (Ctrl + I hotkey).

On Windows, you can also share your Editor settings from Tools > Import and Export Settings. Export a file with the style guide’s C# code formatting and then have every team member import that file.

Visual Studio helps you adhere to the style guide. Formatting then becomes as simple as using a hotkey.

Note: You can configure an EditorConfig file (see above) instead of importing and exporting Visual Studio settings. Doing this facilitates sharing formatting across different IDEs. It also has the added benefit of working with version control. See the .NET code style rule options for more information.

Though this isn’t specific to clean code, be sure to check out the 10 ways to speed up your programming workflow in Unity with Visual Studio. Remember that it is more convenient to format and refactor clean code if you apply these productivity tips.