[gameprogrammer] Re: Design resources

Thanks. Thats the best definition of the process that I've been given. 
It's basically what I had got from the other posts and articles. I'm 
currently looking at articles on making a design doc. Previously I had  
thought it was just defining the overall feel of the game, but now I see 
that what it contains dirrectly relates to getting a good code design as 
well.

Bob Pendleton wrote:

There are as many ways to design programs as their are programmers and
organizations. For doing high level design I have found that writing the
users manual works very well. For games I find that writing down all the
details of what you want the player to see and feel is a good place to
start. Then you ask "how do I make it do that?". At that point you are
doing low level design. The most import thing is to not even sort of
think about or worry about code, operating system, graphics APIs or any
of that until you have written out what you want. Then, when you are
trying to figure out how to make it happen, you worry about the
technology. And, you must we willing to trim what to want to match what
is possible. 

        Bob Pendleton

You're right about what I want to learn, and I have looked at the rest 
of enginuity. It has some very interesting points, but it doesn't 
explain how to define what you need in the engine in the first place. It 
is defining what that particular engine needs and then specifying how to 
implement them. I am following it but it's not teaching me about how to 
design code.

Alexander Whaley wrote:

>If I understand your requirements, that is pretty much what you want to 
>learn: how to work out what your code needs to do, then how to work out 
>what functions it needs and then how to code these functions.
>At the risk of flogging a dead horse, and I realise that you were not 
>entirely happy with enginuity parts 1 and 2, have you looked at parts 3-5???
>If you read part 3, it tells you: you need a profiler.... this is what 
>it needs to do.... here is how you code it.... but hey, don't I need to 
>do this too?... Ok, this is how you do it......
>

Yeah, thats basically what I need to do. Thanks.
Dominic McDonnell

>I think that once you have obtained an idea of all the components of 
>your game engine (or just the game), you then need to work on one 
>component at a time. Looking at other peoples' code should tell you 
>where to start. For example the code below.. Now I don't lie his logging 
>methods so I look elsewhere.
>
>Here is an exerpt of part 3:
>
>    * A CProfileSample object is created with a given name at the
>      beginning of the block of code. It starts the timer.
>    * At the end of the block of code, the CProfileSample object is
>      destroyed (either explicitly, or by letting it fall out of scope).
>      It stops the timer.
>    * When starting up the engine, you set a pointer to an object
>      derived from CProfilerOutputHandler, which is responsible for
>      logging/drawing the statistics the way you want.
>
>            Static functions of CProfileSample allow you to reset the 
>statistics for individual samples or for all samples in the system.
>
>    We can wrap almost all of our profiler up in the CProfileSample 
>class. Take a look:
>
>       class CProfileSample
>
>       {
>
>       public:
>
>        CProfileSample(std::string sampleName);
>
>        ~CProfileSample();
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  
>
>>>Dominic McDonnell <telarau@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>Hi,
>>>I've been programming for a little while, and I've finally got 
>>>around to making games (my primary objective when I started :-). But 
>>>I've hit a snag. Games are a lot more complicated than the other 
>>>programs that I've created. I have been coding programs with little or 
>>>no planning, and that just doesn't work with complicated projects. I 
>>>have looked around the internet for resources on designing programs, but 
>>>all I can seem to find is tutorials or articles on the design of the 
>>>interface not designing the code underneath. I was wondering if you 
>>>could tell me of any book or other resource that would give me some 
>>>help. By design I mean techniques for defining what the program has to 
>>>do, and then how to go about it.
>>>Dominic McDonnell
>>>
>>>
>>>
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