{"id":498,"date":"2010-01-05T22:48:47","date_gmt":"2010-01-06T04:48:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/handyvandal.com\/?p=498"},"modified":"2010-02-23T22:25:36","modified_gmt":"2010-02-24T04:25:36","slug":"oop-game-design-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/2010\/01\/oop-game-design-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"OOP Game Design Theory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Question posted over at Stack Overflow<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I’ve tried to develop a 2D game with C++ in the past using mere objects, however, in the design process I don’t know how and what parts of the engine I should split into smaller objects, what exactly they should do and how to make them interact with each other properly. I’m looking for books, tutorials, papers, anything that explains the game engine design in detail. Thanks.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the comments:<\/p>\n

\n“You might want to take a look at XNA if only to see how the main game loop works.”<\/p>\n

“Don’t use “mere objects”. Use whatever makes sense. Your game doesn’t have to be strict OOP. It has to work, and it should preferably be nice, well-structured code. Neither requires OOP. Write your game using every tool available. Classes, functions, functors, templates, procedural programming, object-oriented programming, functional programming, generic programming, whatever fits the task at hand. Don’t limit yourself to OOP just because some people 20 years ago thought it was the holy grail.”<\/p>\n

“Mandatory reading: http:\/\/scientificninja.com\/advice\/write-games-not-engines<\/a>”<\/p>\n

“Why do you think you need a game engine? Write the code you need in order to implement your game. Modify it along the way as requirements change. And when you have a complete game, take a step back and look at what the result looks like.”<\/p>\n

“I like the try & refactor approach. Crafting OO design takes experience.”<\/p>\n

“Even with experience, it’s still 1) impossible, and 2) a bad idea to try to come up with a complete detailed design before implementing it. There’s a reason the whole “agile” thing has caught on so much. You will encounter issues you hadn’t thought of, so make the design decisions when you’ve got the information you need — that is, when you’ve tried to implement it, and found out what all the pitfalls are.”<\/p>\n

“Give this a try: http:\/\/www.devmaster.net\/articles\/oo-game-design\/<\/a>”<\/p>\n

“If you haven’t made a game before, how can you make an engine? There’s tons of free engines out there or you will be spending 20 years trying to get something done because you will be rewriting over and over again.”<\/p>\n

“What makes a game good is the content not the engine, all good programmers ‘borrow’ other peoples code whenever they can.”<\/p>\n

“Eberly’s 3D Game Engine Architecture<\/em> and 3D Game Engine Design<\/em> are rather heavy on the theory, but cover all of the bases quite well.”<\/p>\n

– OOP Game Design Theory<\/a> @ Stack Overflow\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

My own opinion: Don’t write a game engine. Start with an existing framework. Work within the framework, or modify the framework to meet your needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Question posted over at Stack Overflow: I’ve tried to develop a 2D game with C++ in the past using mere objects, however, in the design process I don’t know how and what parts of the engine I should split into smaller objects, what exactly they should do and how to make them interact with each […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-498","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-game-design","category-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498\/revisions\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/handyvandal.com\/wphv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}