Get to know in detail about the Three Pillars of Game Engineering and the Importance of Modular Game Design.
Game Development is a vast field with diverse culture throughout. The methods used to make games can vary on a large scale and thus depends on the thinking style, the way of approach and the ways of doing things. Sometimes the process can get a bit messy and hard to adapt changes, leaving the fellow developer constrained in the halfway. Therefore, Game Engineering is an utmost required factor that deals with a better and professional flow of work while making games, keeping good practices and ethics in hand. So here are 3 essential Pillars in Game Engineering, every Game Developer should adapt for their games.
Modular Game Design
Modular Game Design is a design theory and practice which divides the entire system into small pieces or modules which can be used later in games independently to modify, replace, change properties of each module and a lot more, according to the requirement of the game. This technique helps Game Developers to create a more immersive game experience for the players. It helps in cost reduction, flexibility in design, shorter learning time, moving out from the world of constraints and exclusion.
Approach / Use of Modular Design
Avoid building up a system that is directly dependent and is hard referenced between them. This ruins the use case and restricts the access level of the component while disturbing the entire link of the system.
Design a system where each component of the system tends to solve a single problem, this allows the developer to change the individual component without breaking the game.
Use Prefabs wherever possible. Prefabs are a great source of enhancing the production workflow while saving a majority of the time. Start using prefabs that contain its own individual logic that can perform after it is dropped into the scene.
Ease of Customization
The modular design primarily helps the team, including the designers and artists to change each component individually without breaking the game or asking for any explicit feature.
Approach / Use of Modular Design
Design the game as a data-driven ecosystem. This allows the game to adopt changes while it’s already running. The set of instruction implemented gives the developer the ability to manipulate and iterate more for a better understanding and hence make the game more efficient.
Iterate over the changes in runtime, this helps the developer to find the right values and right balance for the game.
Debugging
As we all know the importance of debugging in the life of a programmer is extremely crucial, therefore it is immensely important to simplify things up which will help to debug the game easily. Generally, a messed-up game with bad practices will not only slow the game but also has the probability of having major bugs and poor performance. However, this can be considered as the sub-pillar of the above-mentioned points.
Modular Game Design breakdown the game into a simple individual independent component that makes easier to test. The more editable the game is, the more ability it gives to add the functionalities, hence easier it is to debug. And lastly, the more you debug, the more you know about working of your game which will result in a better-polished game.
As we get deeper into this ocean of Game Development, we start to polish our skills and we tend to search for new things every time. Basic Concepts and Design Principle like this will not only help us to learn the Industry Standard approach but also leverage the thinking capability, workflow and the development/production of a Game Developer.
Also, check out some useful resources regarding Game Development.
With Love From VOiD1 Gaming
