Game engine architecture

News & General Discussion
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Hi all,

The question is:
Where can i read how to organise everything inside the “Game engine”: where do you track which variables, where do you store items, what should be the relationship between different game components (parent-child relationchip) which design patterns to use.

The background is: i’m good with tutorials and adding features, but the project soon becomes a mess and it becomes hard to maintain and change things.

Any tutorials/ books/ good articles out there?

Thanks,
Anatolii

2

gameprogrammingpatterns.com

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There just so happens to be a book called “Game Engine Architecture” by Jason Gregory, who worked on the Uncharted franchise amongst other things.

That said, what you’re talking about sounds more like general software design than anything specific to game engines, so don’t restrict yourself to game programming texts.

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Thanks for the responses. I understand, that if you know general software design patterns, then you can sit and think which one fits this or that situation. But i’m trying to gain a more high-level view:

  • e.g. to implement complex UX (which is responsive to the environment) you want to use this pattern
  • to implement AI decisions you need that pattern

And then for sure i can read about the patterns somewhere else.

5

So you’re looking for colour-by-numbers software architecture instructions? I’m not aware of any of those, and I’m not sure how useful they’d be if they exist because things are so often context sensitive.

The best ways I can think of would be:

  • Read about software design and design patterns in general and start applying stuff to your own work as you get familiar with it.
  • Start interacting with other programmers online and communicating the stuff you’re doing and how you’re doing it, so you can take advantage of the knowledge of others and contribute your own to them.

Chances of someone writing an article or book about specifically what you’re trying to do are slim. Chances of someone online having solved something pretty similar and being willing to talk about it, however, are fairly good. And that’ll give you pointers for further research.

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3D Game Engine Programming by Stefan Zerbst is probably one of the best I’ve seen. Game Coding Complete was also quite good. And Game Engine Architecture, obviously. You can search on Amazon book section for “game engine” or “3d engine” and there are a couple others.