/Course-Materials-Architecture-ArtFX-2021

Course materials.

Primary LanguageC++OtherNOASSERTION

Software Architecture & Code Quality Applied To Game Engines - ArtFX 2021

This repository contains the materials for the course on software architecture. It features a game project, whose architecture is a lighter version of industrial-grade ones.

The project's code contains voluntary errors and design flaws which are addressed during the classes. The repository is updated after every class, in order to reflect the evolution of its code.

Installation

The following tools are required:

  1. Premake 5
  2. Visual Studio 2017 or higher

If you're not on Windows, or cannot use Visual Studio, Premake allows to use other toolchains, please read its documentation.

Build

Open a terminal in StealthFactor directory and follow the instructions for your platform.

Windows

premake5.exe vs2019

Open build\StealthFactor.sln, choose your target, and build.

Linux

apt-get install -y g++ g++-multilib libode-dev libsfml-dev make
premake5 gmake2
cd build
make config=release_linux64

External dependencies

In order to simplify installation of the project, the repository contains parts of external projects, in source code form or executable form.

Although the code should support multiple platforms, only precompiled libraries for Windows are provided.

  1. cli.cpp, a CLI argument parser (header-only)
  2. ODE, a physics engine
  3. pugixml, an XML parser (header-only)
  4. SFML, a small multimedia framework

Session #1

  • Why do we need architecture and code quality anyway?
  • Architecture principle: rely on lower level, cannot access to higher level.
  • Overview of a typical game engine architecture.
  • Dependency cycles to be avoided.
  • Singletons can facilitate architecture breaches.
  • Division of responsibilities.
  • Interfaces to break dependency cycles.
  • Dependency injection.
  • Dependency inversion.

Session #2

  • pImpl.
  • RAII.
  • Memory ownership.
  • Smart pointers (std::unique_ptr / std::shared_ptr).
  • Move semantics.
  • void*: C-style pointer to user data.
  • Interface with opaque structures through handlers.

Session #3

  • Specialization through inheritance.
  • Specialization through components, entity-component-system.
  • Camera system.
  • Separation between Model and View.
  • Visitor pattern.
  • Tests.

Session #4

  • Serialization.
  • Visitor pattern, again.
  • Model-View, again.
  • Command pattern, undo-redo.