Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
1
Making Games the
Modular Way
When I first started making games, I would approach development on a project-to-project
basis, recoding and rebuilding everything from scratch each time. As I became a pro-
fessional developer, landing a job at a game development studio making browser-based
games, I was lucky enough to work with a guy who was innovating the scene. He was a
master at turning out great games (both visually and gameplay-wise) very quickly. One
secret to his success lay in the development of a reusable framework that could easily
be refactored to use on all of his projects. His framework was set up to deal with server
communication, input handling, browser communication, and UI among other things,
saving an incredible amount of time in putting together all of the essentials. By reusing
the framework, it allowed more time for him and his team to concentrate on great game-
play and graphics optimization, resulting in games that, at the time, blew the competi-
tion away. Of course, the structure was tailored to how he worked (he did build it, after
all), and it took me a while to get to grips with his style of development; but once I did,
it really opened my eyes. From then on, I used the framework for every project and even
taught other programmers how to go about using it. Development time was substantially
reduced, which left more time to concentrate on making better games.
his topic is based on a similar concept of a game-centric framework for use with
many different types of games, rather than a set of different games in different styles. The
overall goal of this topic is to provide script-based components that you can use within
that framework to make a head start with your own projects in a way that reduces recod-
ing, repurposing, or adaptation time.
