Game Development Patterns and Best Practices

Description

You’ve learned how to program, and you’ve probably created some simple games at some point, but now you want to build larger projects and find out how to resolve your problems. So instead of a coder, you might now want to think like a game developer or software engineer. To organize your code well, you need certain tools to do so, and that’s what this book is all about. You will learn techniques to code quickly and correctly, while ensuring your code is modular and easily understandable. To begin, we will start with the core game programming patterns, but not the usual way. We will take the use case strategy with this book. We will take an AAA standard game and show you the hurdles at multiple stages of development. Similarly, various use cases are used to showcase other patterns such as the adapter pattern, prototype pattern, flyweight pattern, and observer pattern. Lastly, we’ll go over some tips and tricks on how to refactor your code to remove common code smells and make it easier for others to work with you. By the end of the book you will be proficient in using the most popular and frequently used patterns with the best practices. 1: Introduction to Design Patterns Chapter overview Your objective Why you should plan for change Separating the why and the how An Introduction to interfaces The advantages of compartmentalizing code The problems with using design patterns in games Setting up the project Summary 2: One Instance to Rule Them All - Singletons Chapter overview Your objective An overview on class access specifiers The static keyword Pros and cons of global variables What is a Singleton? Learning about templates Templatizing Singletons Advantages/disadvantages of using only one instance The Singleton in action - the Application class Summary 3: Creating Flexibility with the Component Object Model Chapter overview Why a monolithic game object is a bad design Why inheritance hierarchies are inflexible The Strategy pattern and the Decorator pattern The Component Object Model explained Performance concerns Summary 4: Artificial Intelligence Using the State Pattern Chapter overview Summary 5: Decoupling Code via the Factory Method Pattern Chapter overview Your objective The Dependency Inversion Principle The Factory method pattern Creating a component and Object Factory Architecting versus over-architecting Summary 6: Creating Objects with the Prototype Pattern Your objectives The Prototype pattern explained Examples of the clone method in Mach5 Loading archetypes from a file Summary 7: Improving Performance with Object Pools Chapter overview Why you should care about memory The Object Pool pattern explained Implementing a basic object pool Operator overloading in C++ Building the object pool for Mach5 Issues with object pools Summary 8: Controlling the UI via the Command Pattern Chapter overview How can we control actions through buttons? The Command pattern explained The benefits of the command pattern Easy UI with commands in Mach5 Summary 9: Decoupling Gameplay via the Observer Pattern Chapter overview How gameplay creeps into every system The Observer pattern explained Benefits of using the Observer pattern Summary 10: Sharing Objects with the Flyweight Pattern Chapter overview Introductions to particles Implementing particles in Mach5 Why memory is still an issue Introduction to the Flyweight pattern Transitioning to ParticleSystems Summary 11: Understanding Graphics and Animation Chapter overview Introduction to monitor refresh rates Double buffering Triple buffering LCD monitors Time-based movement and animation Summary 12: Best Practices Chapter overview Learning fundamental code quality techniques Learning and understand the uses of the const keyword Learning how iteration can improve your game and code design Learning when to use scripting in a game Summary