Book Image

Game Development Patterns with Unity 2021 - Second Edition

By : David Baron
Book Image

Game Development Patterns with Unity 2021 - Second Edition

By: David Baron

Overview of this book

This book is written for every game developer ready to tackle the bigger picture and start working with advanced programming techniques and design patterns in Unity. Game Development Patterns with Unity 2021 is an introduction to the core principles of reusable software patterns and how to employ them to build components efficiently. In this second edition, you'll tackle design patterns with the help of a practical example; a playable racing game prototype where you’ll get to apply all your newfound knowledge. Notable updates also include a game design document (GDD), a Unity programming primer, and the downloadable source code of a complete prototype. Your journey will start by learning about overall design of the core game mechanics and systems. You’ll discover tried-and-tested software patterns to code essential components of a game in a structured manner, and start using classic design patterns to utilize Unity's unique API features. As you progress, you'll also identify the negative impacts of bad architectural decisions and understand how to overcome them with simple but effective practices. By the end of this Unity book, the way you develop Unity games will change – you’ll adapt a more structured, scalable, and optimized process that will help you take the next step in your career.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
1
Sections 1: Fundamentals
5
Section 2: Core Patterns
16
Section 3: Alternative Patterns
20
About Packt

Decoupling core components with the Observer pattern

The core ingredient of our game is the racing bike. It's the entity in our scene that changes states and updates its properties the most often as it's under the player's control while traveling around the world and interacting with other entities. It has several dependencies to manage, such as the main camera that follows it and the HUD that displays its current speed.

The racing bike is the main subject of our game, and many systems must observe it so that they can update themselves when it changes states. For instance, every time the bike collides with an obstacle, the HUD must update the current value of the shield's health, and the camera displays a full screen shader that darkens the edges of the screen to showcase the diminishing endurance.

This type of behavior is easy to implement in Unity. We could have BikeController tell HUDController and CameraController what to do when it takes damage. But for this...