Game Development Patterns and Best Practices

Utilize proven solutions to solve common problems in game development

About This Book

• Untangle your game development workflow, make cleaner code, and create structurally solid games
• Implement key programming patterns that will enable you to make efficient AI and remove duplication
• Optimize your game using memory management techniques

Who This Book Is For

If you are a game developer who wants to solve commonly-encountered issues or have some way to communicate to other developers in a standardized format, then this book is for you. Knowledge of basic game programming principles and C++ programming is assumed.

What You Will Learn

• Learn what design patterns are and why you would want to use them
• Reduce the maintenance burden with well-tested, cleaner code
• Employ the singleton pattern effectively to reduce your compiler workload
• Use the factory pattern to help you create different objects with the same creation logic and reduce coding time
• Improve game performance with Object Pools
• Allow game play to interact with physics or graphics in an abstract way
• Refractor your code to remove common code smells

In Detail

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.

Style and approach

This book takes a step-by-step real-life case studies approach. Every pattern is first explained using a bottleneck. We will show you a problem in your everyday workflow, and then introduce you to the pattern, and show you how the pattern will resolve the situation.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to Design Patterns
2. One Instance to Rule Them All - Singletons
3. Creating Flexibility with the Component Object Model
4. Artificial Intelligence Using the State Pattern
5. Decoupling Code via the Factory Method Pattern
6. Creating Objects with the Prototype Pattern
7. Improving Performance with Object Pools
8. Controlling the UI via the Command Pattern
9. Decoupling Gameplay via the Observer Pattern
10. Sharing Objects with the Flyweight Pattern
11. Understanding Graphics and Animation
12. Best Practices

John P. Doran is a technical game designer who has been creating games for over 10 years. He has worked on an assortment of games in teams consisting of just himself to over 70 people in student, mod, and professional projects in different roles, from game designer to lead UI programmer. He previously worked at LucasArts on Star Wars: 1313 as a game designer. He later graduated from DigiPen Institute of Technology in Redmond, WA, with a Bachelor of Science in game design.

John is currently a part of DigiPen's research and development branch in Singapore in addition to DigiPen Game Studios. He is also the lead instructor of the DigiPen-Ubisoft Campus Game Programming Program, instructing graduate-level students in an intensive, advanced-level game programming curriculum. In addition to that, he also tutors and assists students in various subjects and gives lectures on C#, C++, Unreal, Unity, game design, and more.

He is the author of Unreal Engine Game Development Cookbook, Building an FPS Game in Unity, Unity Game Development Blueprints, Getting Started with UDK, UDK Game Development, and Mastering UDK Game Development, and he co-wrote UDK iOS Game Development Beginner's Guide, all available from Packt. More information about him can be found at johnpdoran.

Matt Casanova has been programming indie games in C++, as well as mobile games and applications in Java and Objective C, for over ten years. For the last seven years he has assumed the role of technical director for his students. He specializes in 2D game engines and tools.

Matt was an instructor for two years at Digipen Institute of Technology's Singapore campus, where he taught The Advanced Certification in 2D Game Development. This was a six month graduate-level course that specialized in creating 2D game engines. He then spent five years teaching undergraduate courses such as C++, data structures, and game engine architecture for Digipen's degree in Real Time Interactive Simulation in South Korea. He has helped dozens of student teams make successful game projects and avoid the pitfalls of bad code. He currently works as lead mobile developer at a software company in Las Vegas.