iOS Swift Game Development Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. Laying Out a Game

Games are software, and the best software has had some thought put into it regarding how it’s going to work. When you’re writing a game, you need to keep in mind how you’re going to handle the individual tasks that the game needs to perform, such as rendering graphics, updating artificial intelligence (AI), handling input, and the hundreds of other small tasks that your game will need to deal with.

In this chapter, you’ll learn about ways you can lay out the structure of your game that will make development easier. You’ll also learn how to organize the contents of your game so that adding more content and gameplay elements is easier, and find out how to make your game do multiple things at once.

Laying Out Your Engine

Problem

You want to determine the best way to lay out the architecture of your game.

Solution

The biggest thing to consider when you’re thinking about how to best lay out your game is how the game will be updated. There are three main things that can cause the state of the game to change:

Input from the user

The game may change state when the user provides some input, such as tapping a button or typing some text. Turn-based games are often driven by user input (e.g., in a game of chess, the game state might only be updated when the user finishes moving a piece).

Timers

The game state may change every time a timer goes off. The delay between timer updates might be very long (some web-based strategy games have turns that update only once a day), ...