[kamlanie]

Hello all!

I am a decent programmer in a few different languages. (by decent, i mean i can display and manipulate graphics and whatnot.)

I am looking for some tutorials or books on the overall structure game code should follow to make life easier.

I have stumbled around trying to design a tile engine from scratch just by trying to figure it out without copy paste like i used to in the old days ;P. and im starting to hit walls that could probably be solved by having some code architecture knowledge.

[ButchDean]

Kudos for trying to code by trying to understand what is going on rather that cutting and pasting - this is the way you learn.

When learning to program games it is inevitable that you regularly hit brick walls, even when making games professionally it still happens and even Google can be no help!

The key is to stay calm and remember you are not alone. There is a variety of info out there like:

1. Searching Github repositories
2. Checking out Stack Overflow
3. www.toymaker.info

Etc.

Depending on how deep you want to go you can also check out the Game Programming Gems series of books as well as the variety of books out there specifically directed towards 2D and 3D graphics.

Good luck!

[BBeck]

I haven't seen the "end-all/be-all" book on Game Engine Architecture. And there's also the question of "what exactly do you mean by game engine architecture"? Because that's a really broad subject, and one technically that you might be able to come up with a better way to "do it" than anyone else ever has before. Still, you're probably seeking the wisdom of those who have traveled that path before, which is wise.

You might start by putting in "Game Engine Architecture" on Amazon.com. I've seen this book and wondered about it:

http://www.amazon.co...ne+architecture

Game design is such a broad topic that you can have a book on "Game Engine Design" that's several inches thick and doesn't tell you half of what you need to know.

I would think that a lot of organizing your code and whatnot, would fall under the subject of organizing C++ code (or whatever language you're working in) and not necessarily have anything to do with games. So, you might keep that in mind.

[ButchDean]

Game engine architecture, as in code base organization is as unique to each game title as there are games. Game engine architecture is determined by several factors, including:

1. Code performance (in terms of efficiency and size overall).
2. Code maintainability.
3. The quirks of the languages being used.
4. The agreed house style (every software house should have an agreed way that code should be written and organized).
5. Platform-specific considerations.

All of this only unfortunately comes with real world experience. Game engine architecture books actually gripe me because and one book can only show you one, or very few, ways on how game code should be organized.

Of all the game studios that I have worked and currently work in, I am yet to see any game engine architecture design books in the studio library. Having said that, back in the old days when games were written for very few platforms either with assembler, C or BASIC, such books made sense because of the generally simpler games and restricted number of platforms.

Nowadays, games are huge monsters consisting of millions of lines of code spanning several languages meant to serve multiple platforms. I hope you can see why such books only offer an introduction at best, that may or may not be relevant to the real world.

This post has been edited by ButchDean: 08 July 2012 - 05:47 AM