Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
At the highest level, your game application layer creates and loads your game logic,
creates and attaches game views to that logic, and then gives all these systems
some CPU time so they can do their jobs. You
'
ll
learn more about this in
Chapter 5,
Game Initialization and Shutdown,
and Chapter 7,
Controlling the
Main Loop.
Other Application Layer Code
There are lots of other important subsystems in the application layer, including the
following:
n The system clock
n String handling
n Dynamically loaded libraries (DLLs)
n Threads and thread synchronization
n Network communications
n Initialization
n Main loop
n Shutdown
The system clock is critical for games. Without it, you have no way to synchronize
game animations and audio, move objects at a known speed, or simply be able to
time your credits so that people have enough time to read them. Almost every
game subsystem will care about time: physics, animations, user interface, sound, and
so on. Some systems have multiple methods of getting access to the system clock,
each with different levels of resolution or precision. If you choose one that has poor
precision, such as the Windows WM_TIMER message, your game will suffer from jit-
tery animations, bad synchronization between animations and audio, and other
problems.
Game programming becomes more global year after year, and generally games that
sell well in one language will also sell well if they are translated or localized. If you
structure your game correctly and factor all language-specific files, such as strings
into separate files, you
'
ll find it a lot easier to translate your game into a similar lan-
guage. Note that I said
Although it is possible to structure a game
to be in completely different languages like English and Japanese, remember that you
don
similar language.
t just have a technology barrier to multilingual gaming. You also have a cultural
barrier
'
not every game is one that can cross cultures easily.
 
 
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