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Model
By
Zachary Booth Simpson
| Published Jun 19 2001 11:21 PM in General Programming
© 2000 - Zachary Booth Simpson. Copied with permission from http://www.mine-control.com/zack. If you find any of this work useful, please sign Zack's guest book: http://www.mine-cont...i/gbook-zbs.cgi.
Intent
Also called
Problem
Solution
Structure
Examples
Related Patterns
Intent
Store the state of an object which exists in the game world.
Also called
Database Records, World Items, World Objects, Item Database
Problem
Many games consist of a variety of objects which interact. In some cases, there are many kinds of objects, in other cases, only a few. However, in all cases, each object tracks its state as the game progresses. Game rules define the transition of these states, and are often implemented by the Controller pattern.
Solution
Many Model implementations are polymorphic. For example, each type of Model is given its own class which extends a BaseModel class. Subclasses often overload basic methods to implement a special trait.
Care is often given to optimizing Models so that they can be accessed quickly by the View pattern.
Models may be fixed so as to aggregate more efficiently. See Model Database.
Models may implement the Model Database implicitly with statics.
Structure
Not available at this time.
Examples
Some examples of state information that a model might track: hitPoints, name, type, position, orientation, size, status, animationState, meshPointers, isDead, identification.
Some examples of methods that a model might implement: die(), getHit(), updateAnim(), insertIntoWorldDatabase(), moveTo()
Related Patterns
Model collections are also called a Model Database.
