Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Introducing arrays
Arrays are really powerful when it comes to game design. Essentially, an
array
is a grid of
data. We can fill up this grid with any kind of information that we want. In the past, arrays
were used quite heavily as the technology was limited, and even today arrays are still used
and are still very useful. Here is a visual representation of an array:
(data) (data) (data) (data)
(data) (data) (data) (data)
An array is a table of data. You have probably seen this in a spreadsheet program. We can
store multiple items of data in arrays. This differs from variables because we can now add
large amounts, of data.
We can use arrays for the following purposes:
• To save multiple points of data
• To store game object information
• To use a tile map
• To create
save
states that save large amounts of information
• To create a data set that will help us save time during development
