And there we have it! In this first chapter, you've learned some fundamentals about design patterns and also got the Mach5 engine running on your computer.
Specifically, we learned that design patterns are solutions for common programming problems. There are a lot of reasons why we should use them, but in order to use patterns effectively, you first need to know what problem you are trying to solve and which ones can help you in that instance, which is what this book intends to teach you.
We learned how game development is always changing and how important it is to have a plan, as well as an architecture that can support those changes. With that in mind, we learned about various aspects of coding that will be used in the creation of our architecture.
We dived into learning about the separation of concerns principle and how important it is for us to separate the what and how; making it so they do not depend on each other allows us to alter or extend any part of our project with minimal hassle. Afterwards, we explored what interfaces were and how they are useful in giving us a foundation we can build on. Later, we dived into the Mach5 engine, saw an example of how compartmentalized code worked, and the advantages of it. We also saw how using design patterns in games can be a great thing, as well as the problems that they have.
Finally, we downloaded the Mach5 engine ourselves and made sure that it worked correctly. Moving on, in the next chapter, we will tackle our first design pattern, the Singleton, and see how it can be useful to us!
