Object oriented Game Development -P9: There’s a better than 50% chance that you have picked this title off the shelf in a bookshop and are wondering if it’s going to be another one of those ‘secrets of the inner circle’ type of titles. You know, the ones that promise to tell you unspoken truths on how to write really cool games but in reality offer up a rehash of a manual you may already have for free anyway. | 226 Object-oriented game development void Update Time dt m_pMode- Update this dt bool HandleMsg Message pMsg m_pMode- HandleMsg this pMsg private ServerMode m_pMode To couple this to an actual game subclass again see Figure . Summary This has been a long chapter. And yet we ve touched only briefly on the technicalities of the topics we ve discussed. That was the plan the idea all along has been to demonstrate that with a few straightforward OO design principles we can create component architectures that minimise bloat are reusable flexible and light and perform decently. To that end this chapter has been a start. The rest is up to you. Figure Game implementations of abstract or overridable behaviours in the NET component. GameDataModel GameServerModePeer The component model for game development 227 Summary Game engines allow teams to focus on game-play issues rather than technical issues. By their nature they are tightly coupled and monolithic - anathema to software engineering principles. A component-based object model - a set of independent building blocks - allows much more freedom and extensibility than a game engine. What s more the components by virtue of their independent nature are easier to use and reuse than traditional code. Localise simple auxiliary classes within a component to minimise external dependencies. Keep data and their visual representation logically and physically separate. Keep static and dynamic data separate. Avoid making unrelated systems interdependent. Try to avoid using threads in a game. They make debugging a nightmare and you may lose the precise control over scheduling and timing that sequential methods give you. All high-level game systems can be written as .
