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Game Development Patterns and Best Practices

You're reading from   Game Development Patterns and Best Practices Better games, less hassle

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Product type Paperback
Published in Apr 2017
Publisher Packt
ISBN-13 9781787127838
Length 394 pages
Edition 1st Edition
Languages
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Authors (2):
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John P. Doran John P. Doran
Author Profile Icon John P. Doran
John P. Doran
Matt Casanova Matt Casanova
Author Profile Icon Matt Casanova
Matt Casanova
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Table of Contents (13) Chapters Close

Preface 1. Introduction to Design Patterns FREE CHAPTER 2. One Instance to Rule Them All - Singletons 3. Creating Flexibility with the Component Object Model 4. Artificial Intelligence Using the State Pattern 5. Decoupling Code via the Factory Method Pattern 6. Creating Objects with the Prototype Pattern 7. Improving Performance with Object Pools 8. Controlling the UI via the Command Pattern 9. Decoupling Gameplay via the Observer Pattern 10. Sharing Objects with the Flyweight Pattern 11. Understanding Graphics and Animation 12. Best Practices

Implementing a basic object pool


Let's first start off by creating an object pool for a simple class that we can create multiples of:

class GameObject 
{ 
private: 
  // Character's health 
  int currentHealth; 
  int maxHealth; 

  // Character's name 
  std::string name; 

public: 
  GameObject(); 
  void Initialize(std::string _name = "Unnamed", 
     int _maxHealth = -1); 
  std::string GetInfo(); 

};

So, this sample GameObject class contains a name of the object to identify it by and some example properties to make the class seem more game-object-like. Obviously, you can easily add more properties and the same principles apply. In this case, we have a function called Initialize, which provides both a set and reset of values for the class. Finally, I added in a GetInfo function to print out information about the class so we can verify that things are working correctly.

The implementation for the class will look something like this:

/*****************************************************...
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