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  • Is it possible to calculate or mathematically prove if a game is balanced / fair?

    - by Lurca
    This question is not focussed on video games but games in general. I went to a boardgame trade fair yesterday and asked myself if there is a way to calculate the fairness of a game. Sure, some of them require a good portion of luck, but it might be possible to calculate if some character is overpowered. Especially in role-playing games and trading card games. How, for example, can the creators of "Magic: The Gathering" make sure that there isn't the "one card that beats them all", given the impressive number of available cards?

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  • What are examples of games with "minimalist" models/art assets

    - by Ken
    When teaching game development, my student's obsess about building realistic or complex art/models/animation. And spending wayyy to much time trying to get accurate collision detection between two 3D models [despite my best efforts] However I would like them to spend more time thinking about developing the game mechanics, interaction and game play. I'm looking for some games where the visuals are simple but have good game play. Things I am thinking about are Cubes' vs Spheres or Impossible Game. What are more examples of visually simple (preferably 3D) games to help inspire my students?

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  • Alternative to Game State System?

    - by Ricket
    As far as I can tell, most games have some sort of "game state system" which switches between the different game states; these might be things like "Intro", "MainMenu", "CharacterSelect", "Loading", and "Game". On the one hand, it totally makes sense to separate these into a state system. After all, they are disparate and would otherwise need to be in a large switch statement, which is obviously messy; and they certainly are well represented by a state system. But at the same time, I look at the "Game" state and wonder if there's something wrong about this state system approach. Because it's like the elephant in the room; it's HUGE and obvious but nobody questions the game state system approach. It seems silly to me that "Game" is put on the same level as "Main Menu". Yet there isn't a way to break up the "Game" state. Is a game state system the best way to go? Is there some different, better technique to managing, well, the "game state"? Is it okay to have an intro state which draws a movie and listens for enter, and then a loading state which loops on the resource manager, and then the game state which does practically everything? Doesn't this seem sort of unbalanced to you, too? Am I missing something?

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  • Game actions that take multiple frames to complete

    - by CantTetris
    I've never really done much game programming before, pretty straightforward question. Imagine I'm building a Tetris game, with the main loop looking something like this. for every frame handle input if it's time to make the current block move down a row if we can move the block move the block else remove all complete rows move rows down so there are no gaps if we can spawn a new block spawn a new current block else game over Everything in the game so far happens instantly - things are spawned instantly, rows are removed instantly etc. But what if I don't want things to happen instantly (i.e animate things)? for every frame handle input if it's time to make the current block move down a row if we can move the block move the block else ?? animate complete rows disappearing (somehow, wait over multiple frames until the animation is done) ?? animate rows moving downwards (and again, wait over multiple frames) if we can spawn a new block spawn a new current block else game over In my Pong clone this wasn't an issue, as every frame I was just moving the ball and checking for collisions. How can I wrap my head around this issue? Surely most games involves some action that takes more than a frame, and other things halt until the action is done.

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  • C++ Game engine time scale

    - by I Phantasm I
    i have begun creating a very simple game engine and i am trying to work out how to create a time scale for the game.by time scale i mean some way of increasing and decreasing the speed of the game(not the fps) like creating a slow motion effect ... i have no idea how this could be accomplished so any help would be appreciated. if this help im using windows, Opengl and C++ in the game engine... How my engine is setup i have an update and draw function...update is called 25 times per second while display is called as much as possible.

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  • Level Editor + Game -> Duplicating rendering/game specific code?

    - by Utkarsh Sinha
    I've been reading about how to design code for a game. One thing I haven't been able to figure out is - how do you manage writing an outside-game level editor (not an 'in-game level editor') without 'copying' code from the game? For example, you might have to copy all code about the different types of entities you can have. You'll have to add the game rendering code. My guess is this can be done by making a DLL out of the 'engine' part of the game. Then, share it between the actual game and the level editor. Or is there a better/easier way to do this?

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  • Different methods of ammo resupply

    - by Chris Mantle
    I'm writing a small game at the moment. Presently, I have one or two design elements that aren't locked down yet, and I wanted to ask for input on one of these. For dramatic effect, the player's character in my game is immobilised, alone and has a supposedly limited amount of ammo for their weapons. However, I would like to periodically resupply the player with ammo (for the purpose of balancing the level of difficulty and to allow the player to continue if they're doing well). I'm trying to think of a method of resupply that's different to the more familiar strategies of making ammo magically appear or having the antagonists drop some when they die. I'd like to emphasise the notion of the player's isolation as much as possible, and finding a way of 'sneaking' ammo to the player without removing too much of that emphasis is basically what I'm trying to think of (it's definitely a valid argument that resupplying the player removes it anyway) I have considered a sort of simple in-game 'store', where kills get you points that you can spend on ammo for your favourite weapon. This might work well, and may also be good for supporting a simple micro-transaction business model within the game. However, you'd have to pause the game often to make purchases, which would interrupt the action, and it works against the notion of isolation. Any thoughts?

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  • How to handle a player's level and its consequent privileges?

    - by Songo
    I'm building a game similar to Mafia Wars where a player can do tasks for his gang and gain experience and thus advancing his level. The game is built using PHP and a Mysql database. In the game I want to limit the resources allowed to player based on his level. For example: ________| (Max gold) | (Max army size) | (Max moves) | ... Level 1 | 1000 | 100 | 10 | ... Level 2 | 1500 | 200 | 20 | ... Level 3 | 3000 | 300 | 25 | ... . . . In addition certain features of the game won't be allowed until a certain level is reached such as players under Level 10 can't trade in the game market, players under Level 20 can't create alliances,...etc. The way I have modeled it is by implementing a very loooong ACL (Access Control List) with about 100 entries (an entry for each level). However, I think there may be a simpler approach to this seeing that this feature have been implemented in many games before.

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  • Evoland: A Video Game About Video Game History

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Browser-based Evoland is, hands down, one of the more clever video game concepts to come across our desk. The game itself is a history of video games–as you play the game the game evolves from a limited 8-bit monochrome adventure into a modern game. You start off unable to do anything but move right and collect a treasure chest. That treasure chest unlocks the left key (keys are configured in a WASD style keypad) which in turn allows you to move around a simple monochromatic forest clearing to unlock the rest of the movement keys. From there you begin unlocking more game features, effectively evolving the game from monochrome to 16 and then 64 bit color and unlocking various game play features. The game itself is short and can be played in about the same time you could watch a video covering the basics of various game changes over the last 30 years but actually playing the game and watching the evolution in progress is far more rewarding. Hit up the link below to take it for a spin. Evoland [via Boing Boing] How To Switch Webmail Providers Without Losing All Your Email How To Force Windows Applications to Use a Specific CPU HTG Explains: Is UPnP a Security Risk?

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  • What benefits does a game design degree have for a hobby game programmer?

    - by sm4
    I am interested in studying game design, not because I want a job in the games industry, but because I am interested in the subject itself. I read the following questions, but they mostly deal with the effects on your career in game industry. Should I consider a graduate degree in game development? Game Development Degree vs Computer Science Degree First I thought a game development degree could be beneficial. But from the websites of colleges that offer such degrees, I feel like its more about basic programming with examples from games. This college offers game design degrees, for example. My question is, can I benefit from such a degree when I already have a degree in Computer Science, I already know programming, I'm already developing a game and finally, I have this site to help me when I get stuck?

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  • Kickstarter "last minute cold feet"

    - by mm24
    today I scheduled the publication of a video on kickstarter requesting approximately 5.000 $ in order to complete the iPhone shooter game I started 1 year ago after quitting my job. I invested more than 20.000$ in the game so far (for artwork, music, legal and accountant expenses) and I am now getting cold feet about my decision of publishing the video. The game is "nearly finished", in other words: the game mechanics are working but I still have some bugs to fix. Once I will have finished this (I hope will take me 1 or 2 weeks) I plan to start working on the actual level balancing (e.g. deciding the order of appearence of enemies for each level and balancing the number of hitpoints and strenght of bullets that the enemies have). Reasons for not publishing the video are: fear that the concept can be copied easily: the game is a shooter game set in a different environment (its a pretty cool one, believe me :)) and I am worried that someone might copy* the idea (I know, its the usual "I am worried story.."). A shooter game is one of the easiest game to implement and hence there will be hundreds game developer able to copy it by just adapting their existing code and changing graphics (not as straightforward). It took me one year to develop this because I was inexperienced plus there are approximately 6/7 months of work from the illustrator and there are 8 unique music tracks composed. The soundtrack of the video is the soundtrack of the game wich is not yet published and has not been deposited to a music society. I did create legally valid timestamps for the tracks and I am considering uploading the album on iTunes before publishing the video so I can have a certain publication date. But overall I am a bit scared and worried because I have never done this before and even the simple act of publishing an album requires me to read a long contract from the "aggregator company") which, even if I do have contracts with the musicians do worry me as I am not a U.S. resident and I am not familiar with the U.S. law system Reasons for publishing the video are: I almost run out of money (but this is not a real reason as I should have enough for one more month of development time) ...I kind of need extra money as, even if I do have money for 1 month of development I do not have money for marketing and for other expenses (e.g. accountant) It will create a fan base I could get some useful feedback from a wider range of beta testers It might create some pre-release buzz in case some blogger or game magazine likes the concept Anyone has had similar experiences? Is there a real risk that someone will copy the concept and implement it in a couple of months? Will the Kickstarter campaing be a good pre-release exposure for the gmae? Any refrences of similar projects/situations? Is it realistic that someone like ROVIO will copy the idea straight away?

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  • What's a good tool for Scrum Project Management in game development? [closed]

    - by BleakCabalist
    I'm looking for an efficient, easy-to-learn tool for Scrum project management not for proffesional use but to use it in my thesis concerning the use of Scrum in game development. Basically I want to visualize a production process of a hypothetical game. Some fragments of the production process should be really detailed to make my point, so basically user stories, tasks, burndown charts etc. are a must. I'm using Scrum, Kanban and some Lean practices for eliminating waste. I also want to use Extreme Programming practices in this production process including TDD and Continuous Integration. I have zero experience in proffesional project management so I need something that's fairly simple to use for a newb like me. Anyone can recommend a tool like that? For now I was thinking about TargetProcess and ScrumWorks. Thanks.

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  • Help with game development. Render loop?

    - by John
    Hello, I'm working on a simple game, this is my first game project. Most of the samples I find have a Render Loop where all the game logic is made too and I just don't like this. Let's say I have a ball with X=0, and a wall in X=10 and in a slow machine, the first loop places the ball in X=7 and in a second loop, it places the ball in X=14. It would just crash the game! Is this "render loop" the right way to make games? Should I write code to check for things like this in every frame? Example, new frame X=14, last frame have X=7, so I should check if there's anything from X=7 to X=14?? I was thinking that I should have a separated thread for the game logic and in the render loop, I should just "take a snapshot" of the current game logic and display that, no? How do you guys, experienced game developers work around this? thanks!

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  • Calculating Delta time , what is wrong?

    - by SteveL
    For 2 days now i am trying to calculate the correct delta time for my game , I am starting to getting crazy since i tried all the solutions that i found on the 5 first google pages... What is wrong? I cant get the correct delta time ,whatever i tried is just not working , the delta goes from 1 to 4 and then back 1 and then to 3 even if i take the averange delta between many frames.Plus the game runs way much faster(i mean the movement) on slow devices than in fast. The game runs on android so the spikes between frames are expected. My code is this: void Game::render() { timesincestart=getTimeMil(); _director->Render(); _director->Update(); float dif=(getTimeMil()-timesincestart);//usally its about 5 milliseconds lastcheck++; sumdelta+=dif; if(lastcheck>20) { sumdelta=sumdelta/20; delta=sumdelta; sumdelta=0; lastcheck=0; } LOGI("delta:%f",delta); }

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  • Alternatives to a leveling system

    - by Bane
    I'm currently designing a rough prototype of a mecha fighting game. These are the basics I came up with: Multiplayer (matchmaking for up to 10 people, for now) Browser based (HTML5) 2D (<canvas>) Persistent (as in, players have accounts and don't have to use a new mech each time they start a match) Players earn money upon destroying another mech, which is used to buy parts (guns, armor, boosters, etc) Simplicity (both of the game itself, and of the development of said game) No "leveling" (as in, players don't get awarded with XP) The last part is bothering me. At first, I wanted to have players gain experience points (XP) when destroying other mechs, but gaining two things at once (money and XP) seemed to be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity. If I were to have a leveling system, that would require additional development. But, the biggest problem is that I simply couldn't fit it anywhere! Adding levels would require adding meaning to these levels, and most of the things that I hoped to achieve could already be achieved with the money mechanic I introduced. So I decided to drop leveling off completely. That, in turn, removed a fairly popular and robust mean of progression in games from my game (not that I would use it well anyway). Is there another way of progression in games, aside from leveling and XP points, that wouldn't get rendered redundant by my money mechanic, would be somehow meaningful (even on a symbolic level), and wouldn't be in conflict with my last point, which is simplicity?

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  • Vacuum spread in a tile-based space game (like in Faster Than Light game)

    - by Reeze
    I've a space game with tilemap that looks like this (simplified): Map view - from top (like in SimCity 1) 0 - room space, 1 - some kind of wall, 8 - "lock" beetween rooms public int[,] _layer = new int[,] { { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 1, 1, 8, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 0, 8, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, { 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0}, }; Each tile contains Air property (100 = air, 0 = vacuum). I made a little helper method to take tiles near tile with vacuum (to "suck air"): Point[] GetNearCells(Point cell, int distance = 1, bool diag = false) { Point topCell = new Point(cell.X, cell.Y - distance); Point botCell = new Point(cell.X, cell.Y + distance); Point leftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y); Point rightCell = new Point(cell.X + distance, cell.Y); if (diag) { return new[] { topCell, botCell, leftCell, rightCell }; } Point topLeftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); Point topRightCell = new Point(cell.X + distance, cell.Y + distance); Point botLeftCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); Point botRightCell = new Point(cell.X - distance, cell.Y - distance); return new[] { topCell, botCell, leftCell, rightCell, topLeftCell, topRightCell, botLeftCell, botRightCell }; } What is the best practice to fill rooms with vacuum (decrease air) from some point? Should i use some kind of water flow? Thank you for any help!

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  • Changing Career to Game Development

    - by Don Carleone
    I m enthusiastic about and ready to shifting my career to Game Development sector, but before that I wonder some situations, I m now working as Senior .net programmer, i can only write code in c# right now, but i started to learn c++, I m computer engineer so before I know how to write in C but I didnt work with big projects, I wrote "Game of Life" before with C and used only Linked List DataStructure becouse of pushed my limits. But now I m thinking to shift Game Development, I love to play Console Games, I respect people who works about that business. But I just wonder, I see a lot of great developers who write codes with C++ and I ask myself that guys dont think to join Game Industry so why I think I can join! is that True? I dont live in USA or big country like. I live in a poor country, and here is no any Game Development Company, so I have to move to USA for working that job. So can you tell me if I start to learn something (c++,game enginees,physic enginees,3d math etc.) right now and working my usual job, after 7-8 month is it good time to move and finding a job about Game development in USA as junior game developer? is that possible? or is this just a dream? I realy need your advices. You can give down vote about that no problem, at least one advice can help me in my life.

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  • Does concurrency inherently introduce "randomness" into a game?

    - by Jeff
    When a game is implemented with concurrency (as most games are), does this necessarily, by its very nature, introduce an element of randomness into the game that is outside of the players' control? Note that when I use the word "random", I'm not meaning to launch into a philosophical debate about the deterministic nature of the system. I understand that concurrency is deterministic in the sense that the operating system decides which processes to allow time on the CPU and in what order (or the JVM controls which Thread's turn it is to execute, etc). But my understanding of this is that there is no way to control or predict whether one thread's next command will execute before or after another. The reason I'm asking is because this seems like a fundamental difficulty for game development where a game is supposedly designed around a player's skill. Consider a game like League of Legends. Assume that two players are battling it out. It's a very close contest between the two and it's coming down to the wire -- so much so that whoever gets their last attack off will be the one to kill the other and win the game for their team. If the players are implemented using concurrency and the situation really was like this, is it essentially out of the players' hands at this point? Is the outcome of this match all up to whatever system is arbitrarily deciding which player's thread/process will execute next? If not, what am I misunderstanding about concurrency? If so, is there any way around this problem so that a game of skill can always be a game of skill, especially in those most crucial moments?

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  • Challenges in multi-player Android Game Server with RESTful Nature

    - by Kush
    I'm working on an Android Game based on Contract Bridge, as a part of my college Summer Internship project. The game will be multi-player such that 4 Android devices can play it, so there's no BOT or CPU player to be developed. At the time of getting project, I realized that most of the students had already worked on the project but none of their works is reusable now (for variety of reasons like, undocumented code and design architecture, different platform implementation). I have experience working on several open source projects and hence I emphasis to work out on this project such that components I make become reusable as much as possible. Now, as the game is multi-player and entire game progress will be handled on server, I'm currently working on Server's design, since I wanted to make game server reusable such that any client platform can use it, I was previously confused in selecting Socket or REST for Game Server's design, but later finalized to work on REST APIs for the server. Now, since I have to keep all players in-sync while they make movements in game, on server I've planned to use Database which will keep all players' progress, specific for each table (in Bridge, 4 players play on single table, and server will handle many such game tables). I don't know if its an appropriate decision to use database as shared medium to track progress of each game table (let me know if there's an appropriate or better option). Obviously, when game is completed for the table, data for that table on server's database is discarded. Now the problem is that, access to REST service is an HTTP call, so as long as client doesn't make any request, server will remain idle, and consider a situation where A player has played a card on his device and the device requests to apply this change on the server. Now, I need to let rest of the three devices know that the player has played a card, and also update view on their device. AFAIK, REST cannot provide a sort-of Push-notification system, since the connection to the server is not persistent. One solution that I thought was to make each device constantly poll the server for any change (like every 56 ms) and when changes are found, reflect it on the device. But I feel this is not an elegant way, as every HTTP request is expensive. (and I choose REST to make game play experience robust since, a mobile device tends to get disconnected from Internet, and if there's Socket-like persistent connection then entire game progress is subject to lost. Also, portability on client-end is important) Also, imagining a situation where 10 game tables are in progress and 40 players are playing, a server must be capable to handle flooded HTTP requests from all the devices which make it every 56 ms. So I wonder if the situation is assumed as DoS attack. So, explaining the situation, am I going on the right track for the server design? I wanted to be sure before I proceed much further with the code.

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  • A game, any game.

    - by dapostolov
    Armed with a game idea from my past, it is my intention to code and release this game idea using the Microsoft XNA technology. The game? A 2D isometric-ish battlefield type game to allow 2 players to fling and dodge fireballs. I called this game Wizard Wars. I've axed most of the content from my old game design document to keep the game as simple as possible. So let's see how easy it is to make a video game! D.

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  • Which data structure you will use to for a witness list?

    - by mateen
    I'm making a game where the plot is a bank robbery. Lots of people witness that robbery. The game will load a list of suspects, while the players (witnesses) will have to identify the suspects of this robbery. The game should load a list of suspects to identify the one as quickly as possible. Admin can add/remove suspects in the lists and two or more lists of suspects can also be merged into one (to show it to the player). The question is which data structure will be suitable to develop the lists?

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  • Google play game services and Facebook integration in one game

    - by Ineentho
    We are creating a cross platform game for iOS and Android. We have thought about how and with which services we should integrate achievements and scoreboards with. For the iOS part, we are pretty sure that this how we want to do, in order from when the user opens the app for the first time: Connect with Game Center (Should be automatic, the user shouldn't even notice?) We will also get the players nickname for public scoreboards here. Ask if the user wants to connect with Facebook so that we can compare the players highscores with their friends. We could add Google play game services there as well, but I don't feel like that adds anything to the experience for the end user. Now comes the tricky part: Android We thought that we could do just like for iOS, except that we replace Game Center with Google Play Game Services. However, unlike Game Center, Game Services will ask the user to log in to their Google+ account and allow us to access their account. So now, what we have is a double login, first with Google+ and then with Facebook. What will users think about that? Should we scrap Play Services entirely and just ask the user for a nickname within our app and user Facebook for achievements?

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  • Any good tutorials or resources for learning how to design a scalable and "component" based game 'fr

    - by CodeJustin.com
    In short I'm creating a 2D mmorpg and unlike my last "mmo" I started developing I want to make sure that this one will scale well and work well when I want to add new in-game features or modify existing ones. With my last attempt with an avatar chat within the first few thousand lines of code and just getting basic features added into the game I seen my code quality lowering and my ability to add new features or modify old ones was getting lower too as I added more features in. It turned into one big mess that some how ran, lol. This time I really need to buckle down and find a design that will allow me to create a game framework that will be easy to add and remove features (aka things like playing mini-games within my world or a mail system or buddy list or a new public area with interactive items). I'm thinking that maybe a component based approach MIGHT be what I'm looking for but I'm really not sure. I have read documents on mmorpg design and 2d game engine architecture but nothing really explained a way of designing a game framework that will basically let me "plug-in" new features into the main game and use the resources of the main game without changing much within my 'main game code'. Hope someone understands what I mean, any help will is appreciated.

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  • References about Game Engine Architecture in AAA Games

    - by sharethis
    Last weeks I focused on game engine architecture and learned a lot about different approaches like component based, data driven, and so on. I used them in test applications and understand their intention but none of them looks like the holy grail. So I wonder how major games in the industry ("AAA Games") solve different architecture problems. But I noticed that there are barely references about game engine architecture out there. Do you know any resources of game engine architecture of major game titles like Battlefield, Call of Duty, Crysis, Skyrim, and so on? Doesn't matter if it is an article of a game developer or a wiki page or an entire book. I read this related popular question: Good resources for learning about game architecture? But it is focused on learning books rather than approaches in the industry. Hopefully the breadth of our community can carry together certain useful informations! Thanks a lot! Edit: This question is focused but not restricted to first person games.

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