Every time I read a tutorial or skim through a book on making games or game engines, they all seem to use a different method of structuring the classes together. I was wondering, to anyone here who has experimented enough with trying to put decent base game engine classes together... what book or books out there demonstrate what you've found to be the most modify-friendly way of structuring them, so that making games derived from those classes can take place with a good balance between amount of work and being intuitive and easy to follow? I'm talking about how easy the code is to decipher to a new programmer, or even modifying it when you come back to it after a long break without having to relearn it all, clean and effective use of global objects (if that exists), keeping it from becoming spaghetti from all the class-class references, etc. Thanks for any suggestions.

OpenGL Game Programming had a simple, yet nicely designed architecture.

3D Game Engine Programming is pretty good as well, although there are some compile and code issues.

Eberly alos has, albeit more complicated, solid architecture design imho.

(I am assuming, of course, this is limited to 3D games...).


Hope that helps -

#dth-0

"(I am assuming, of course, this is limited to 3D games...)."

Assuming that 2D games now just use quads to render textures, sure. I'm also looking for good base sound, network, input and resource classes. You know, all the pieces that go into a game engine. Does 3D Game Engine Programming cover those subjects as well?

Of what I have read of it, its not too bad. However, not every detail is covered in the book. Many times you are encouraged to review the source code on the CD and assumed to be able to understand it. Again, there are compile problems and the reviews seem to be polarized. Here's the contents:



The OpenGL book was *very* good and I have read all the way through it (it was written by some fairly 'known' members here) but is obviously OpenGL specific and does not cover abstractions to the raster API. Its also older so it doesn't cover shader topics at all. If you need to save a few dollars you may find it used on Amazon - that way you could justify buying both.


Hope that helps..

#dth-0

Thank you much. It certainly looks like it covers a lot of ground. I'll peek at the OpenGL book as well. Thanks!