Introducing Design Patterns and Best Practices in Unity

Despite the growing popularity and widespread use of serious games, the development of effective serious games is difficult, requiring an appropriate balance between game design and instructional design. Although there are fundamental differences between games developed purely for entertainment compared to those developed for “serious” purposes, there are currently no standard development tools specifically intended for serious game design and development available that encourage developers to follow a set of best practices. Rather, developers of serious games often rely on existing game engines and frameworks that are specific to entertainment-based game development. Given the availability of a large number of game engines and frameworks, deciding on which one to use to develop a serious game may be difficult, yet the choice of engine or framework can play a significant role in the development process. In this paper we present the results of a literature review that examined the frameworks and game engines that are used to develop serious games. We provide a list of the most commonly used frameworks and game engines and summarize their features. Knowledge of the frameworks and game engines that are most popular and details regarding why they are popular may prove to be useful to serious games developers seeking such tools. The chapter ends with a brief discussion regarding a framework that is currently being developed specifically for the development of serious games. Through consultation with the potential users of the framework (serious games developers), the framework aims to strike a balance between ease of use and functionality, while providing the user with the necessary options and tools to ideally develop effective serious games.

Design patterns are a common strategy employed in software development to promote several aspects of software quality, including code maintainability. Game development is a multidisciplinary field that includes not only software development but also animations, interactivity, sound design and others. Given the short deadlines in which game developers commonly operate, on top of the intrinsic complexity of the field itself, code maintainability is often overlooked by game developers. Hence, this work investigates how design patterns can impact the code maintainability of games. First, we performed a review to understand how (and which) design patterns can be applied to different game mechanics. Next, we selected two small games and refactored the code by applying design patterns to some of the games’ mechanics. By leveraging static analysis to assess the games’ code maintainability before and after the application of the design patterns, we observed an overall code maintainability improvement of 5.5%. The preliminary results indicate the potential to use design patterns as a strategy to improve code maintainability in the context of game development.

Beginning Android C++ Game Development introduces general and Android game developers like you to Android's powerful Native Development Kit (NDK). The Android NDK platform allows you to build the most sophisticated, complex and best performing game apps that leverage C++. In short, you learn to build professional looking and performing game apps like the book's case study, Droid Runner. In this book, you'll learn all the major aspects of game design and programming using the Android NDK and be ready to submit your first professional video game app to Google Play and Amazon Appstore for today's Android smartphones and tablet users to download and play. The techniques contained in this book include building a game engine, writing a renderer, and building a full game app with entities, game levels and collisions. As part of the tutorial you'll also learn about inserting perspectives using cameras and including audio in your game app.

Scholars have extensively studied video game labor practices (e.g., Bulut, E. (2015). Glamor above, precarity below: Immaterial labor in the video game industry. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 32(3), 193-207. https://doi.org/10.1080/15295036.2015.1047880 , Bulut, E. (2020). White masculinity, creative desires, and production ideology in video game development. Games and Culture, 16, 1555412020939873; Banks, J. (2013). Co-creating videogames. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing; Kerr, A. (2010). The culture of gamework. In M. Deuze (Ed), Managing Media Work (pp. 225-236). London: Sage; O’Donnell (2009). The everyday lives of video game developers: Experimentally understanding underlying systems/structures. Transformative Works and Cultures, 2. https://doi.org/10.3983/twc.2009.0073 , O’Donnell (2014). Developer’s dilemma: The secret world of videogame creators. Cambridge, MA: MIT press; Johnson, R. S. (2013). Toward greater production diversity. Games and Culture, 8(136), 136-160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412013481848 , Johnson, R. (2014). Hiding in plain sight: Reproducing masculine culture at a video game studio. Communication, Culture & Critique, 7, 578-594. https://doi.org/10.1111/cccr.12023 ); yet, few have exclusively examined the process of character design (e.g., Srauy, S. (2017). Professional norms and race in the North American video game industry. Games and Culture, 14, 478-497. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412017708936 ). Using a grounded theory analysis of 19 interviews with games designers and developers, this work complements existing research with insights on how gender and gendered interactions, technologies, audiences, market logics, and corporate culture integrate and influence character design practices. We found that technological affordances (e.g., game engines and related software; see Whitson, J. R. (2018). Voodoo software and boundary objects in game development: How developers collaborate and conflict with game engines and art tools. New Media & Society, 20, 2315-2332) converged with the masculine, heteronormative identities of game developers to shape normalized valued practices for character design, resulting in formulaic tropes that generally appealed to a masculine audience. Changes in status quo character design were attributed to diversity-conscious individuals, who operated within organizational practices privileging proven formulas over innovative designs.

Design patterns in software development have shown great promise in improving software quality. Traditionally, software developers utilize a set of design patterns to foster reusability and better software design. Recently, mobile applications (apps) have become a mainstay of modern computing, as well as, a challenging domain for software engineers. This is because mobile apps now target more critical domains such as health, banking, m-payments, and even military to mention just a few. Android is a very popular mobile platform, and has managed to take over the majority of mobile market. It is true that there are comprehensive studies in the area of design patterns detection in several object-oriented languages such as Java, C# and C++. However, little studies target design patterns in Android apps. As a step toward helping to measure and explore the application of design patterns in Android apps, we introduce PatRoid, an automated framework for detecting design patterns. PatRoid is a model-based approach that is able to detect design patterns laying inside Android apps source code. The model is based on a graph isomorphism approach, where design patterns are divided into sub-patterns that can be aggregated to formulate design patterns. We have conducted a preliminary evaluation and the results show that PatRoid can detect all of the 23 GoF design patterns.

Given the sparsity of standard game engines and frameworks for serious game development, developers of serious games typically rely on entertainment-based game development tools. However, given the large number of game engines and frameworks dedicated to entertainment game development, deciding on which tool to employ may be difficult. A literature review that examined the frameworks and game engines used to develop serious games was recently conducted. Here, a list of the most commonly identified frameworks and game engines and a summary of their features is provided. The results presented provide insight to those seeking tools to develop serious games.

Welcome to the third volume and first issue of 2005 for the ACM Computers in Entertainment online magazine! In this issue we publish seven interesting papers on entertainment technologies, including animation, games, interactive TV, storytelling, and artificial intelligence. The article on inverse kinematics was voted the best paper and presentation at the Second International Game Design and Technology Workshop, held last September at Liverpools John Moores University. To begin, the Interviews column features video interviews with three of our distinguished advisory board members: Bill Kinder, Elisabeth Freeman, and Eric Freeman. Bill Kinder, Director of Editorial and Postproduction at the Pixar Animation Studios, talks about the new technology for the Pixar movies "The Incredibles (2004)" and "Cars (2006)", digital cinema, home theater, and animation. Elisabeth and Eric Freeman, authors and computer scientists, discuss digital rights management, movies on demand, disruptive technology, and their new book, Head First Design Patterns (O'Reilly, 2004). In the Animation section, Michael Meredith and Steve Maddock (University of Sheffield) present a technique that enhances an inverse kinematics solver such that when the results are applied to a computer character, they can generate a level of individualization tailored to both the character and the environment, e.g. a walking motion can become "stiffer" or can be turned into a limping motion. The article is accompanied by four exciting videos that demonstrate the authors techniques. Bill Tomlinson (University of California, Irvine) describes the differences between linear animation and interactive animation in several areas of character design: character intelligence, emotional expressiveness, navigation, transitions among animations, and multi-character interaction. In the Games section, Jesse Schell (Carnegie Mellon University) explores the common principles that underlie both story- and game-based entertainment. He argues that with the advent of computer games, story and gameplay, two age-old enterprises with very different sets of rules, are showing a similar phenomenon to the "wave-particle" duality in the physical world. Bride Mallon and Brian Webb (Queens University of Belfast) report results from a series of empirical studies exploring narrative dimensions of adventure and role-play in computer-game design. A phenomenological, reader-response methodology was used in their studies to identify narrative considerations appropriate to the game-players experiences. In the Interactive Television section, Lydia Loizides (Paphion Inc. & National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences) dispels the mistruths and misconceptions in the media concerning interactive TV. She shows some examples of advancement that iTV has made over the past decade, and ponders how quickly the industry can embrace and deploy interactive applications that will ultimately make watching television a more relevant and satisfying experience for the viewer. In the Book Reviews column, Georgios N. Yannakakis (University of Southern Denmark) reviews the book AI Game Development: Synthetic Creatures with Learning and Reactive Behaviors by Alex J. Champandard (New Riders, 2004). The book attempts to bridge the current gap between artificial intelligence research in academia and computer game development in industry. The language-independent open-source project FEAR (Flexible Embodied Animat aRchitecture http://fear.sourceforge.net/) is used extensively in the book for demos and examples. Edgar A. Maldonado and Joseph A. Zupko (The Pennsylvania State University) review the book Interactive Storytelling: Techniques for 21st Century Fiction by Andrew S. Glassner (A K Peters, 2004). The book analyzes games and storytelling, and describes the principal problems that developers face in their attempts to merge these two activities into an interactive form of entertainment. It would be interesting to compare and contrast the book and Jesse Schells paper "Understanding Entertainment: Story and Gameplay Are One" published in this issue. Last but not least, we join the world in expressing our deep sorrows and sympathy for the earthquake and tsunami victims in many parts of Asia and east Africa. We support the United Nations Childrens Fund www.unicefusa.org, the American Red Cross www.redcross.org, and other disaster relief agencies. The meaning of life for human beings is to serve one another for the survival of humanity and the advancement of civilization. Thank you for your continuing support. Please enjoy this exciting issue of the magazine. Sincerely, Newton Lee Editor-in-Chief ACM Computers in Entertainment Los Angeles— January 2005

Object oriented design patterns (DP) are meant to provide a common structure for solving common software development problems. Applying those patterns is expected to improve the software systems maintainability, comprehensibility, and provide a common language for developers to understand and effectively communicate. However, this was not always the case, where some studies have shown that using design patterns may lead to a system harder to maintain and understand and more error prone; as compared to same systems without the use of design patterns. This variation is referred to the features of the system on hand, and the experience of the developers who are capable to know what design patterns to use and when. Considering the video game development, the use of software design pattern is still at low scale, and still; there is no recipe on what and when to use design patterns. In the meantime, there are different game design frameworks that define different aspects which need to be considered when developing a game. In this paper, we propose a framework that integrates some creational and behavioral DP, with a specific game design framework. In this way, we claim that the developers will have some hints on what DP to use with the main game aspects. This framework is suitable for games which can be developed after the first course of game design, regardless of the game engine used for development. The framework can be extended with more DP, for larger scale and more sophisticated game.

This chapter introduces an approach to use best-practice experiences in terms of Design Patterns to support the development of high-quality and successful educational games. These Game-based Learning Design Patterns draw from previous work on Game Design Patterns and Pedagogical Patterns. The chapter provides background on the Design Pattern approach and explains the structure of the new pattern type based on selected examples. It also illustrates that existing patterns, e.g., from Game Design, may provide first evidence, while the identification of Game-based Learning Design Patterns is not straightforward.

In contemporary software development, it is crucial to adhere to design patterns because well-organized and readily maintainable source code facilitates bug fixes and the development of new features. A carefully selected set of design patterns can have a significant impact on the productivity of software development. Data Access Object (DAO) is a frequently used design pattern that provides an abstraction layer between the application and the database and is present in the back-end. As serverless development arises, more and more applications are using the DAO design pattern, but it has been moved to the front-end. We refer to this pattern as WebDAO. It is evident that the DAO pattern improves development productivity, but it has never been demonstrated for WebDAO. Here, we evaluated the open source Angular projects to determine whether they use WebDAO. For automatic evaluation, we trained a Natural Language Processing (NLP) model that can recognize the WebDAO design pattern with 92% accuracy. On the basis of the results, we analyzed the entire history of the projects and presented how the WebDAO design pattern impacts productivity, taking into account the number of commits, changes, and issues.

Games development brings fun into the software engineering curriculum, but it is a practical activity that educators cannot teach in traditional lecture-based environments. Including pedagogical aspects of problem-based, cooperative, blended and experiential learning is necessary to achieve a high learning experience.In this paper we describe and evaluate a block course in which we ask students with almost no mobile application development experience to create games in just two weeks. We offer the course in two different modes, for beginners who learn games development, and for tutors who help us in the organization of the course and in the teaching activities.Apart from games development and game design, students learn modeling, design patterns and software configuration management. They practice soft skills in team work, present their games to their classmates using Pecha Kucha and publish their games into the App Store. Our evaluations show that students appreciate the great learning experience.

Among the many commendable creations presented by game developers, the design of game mechanics generally shares common components. This observation can also be validated by using some less impressive works as counterexamples; however, there is currently a lack of comprehensive summarization of these systems. Through analysis, this paper extracts the game mechanic design patterns present in these successful games. The paper explores the practical application of a game design pattern that originates from a core game mechanism and progressively generates usable sub-mechanisms. This pattern involves selecting a specific core gameplay element and introducing auxiliary mechanisms to expand its dimensions. Through a systematic exploration of various combinations and interactions, this approach aims to create diverse sub-mechanisms that enrich gameplay and level design. The paper discusses the benefits and challenges of this design pattern and provides illustrative examples.

Game developers have been using commercial game engines to create serious games. The development of serious game is a process that requires game and instructional design. Constructionist environments and games are becoming more popular in the last years because of the importance of Computational Thinking to develop problem solving skills. Despite this popularity, there is a lack of available game engines and frameworks to develop this kind of games. This paper proposes a game engine architecture to support the affordable development of constructionist games. The game engine specification describes components of game, instructional and constructionist elements as a low-level definition that facilitates direct implementation. A serious game built upon this specification and used by 96 students is also presented in this paper. This validation provided some future work ideas, as an editor tool, SDK and API.

Design patterns offer flexible solutions to common problems in software development. Recent studies have shown that several design patterns involve crosscutting concerns. Unfortunately, object-oriented (OO) abstractions are often not able to modularize those crosscutting concerns, which in turn decrease the system reusability and maintainability. Hence, it is important verifying whether aspect-oriented approaches support improved modularization of crosscutting concerns relative to design patterns. Ideally, quantitative studies should be performed to compare object-oriented and aspect-oriented implementations of classical patterns with respect to important software engineering attributes, such as coupling and cohesion. This paper presents a quantitative study that compares aspect-based and OO solutions for a representative set of design patterns. We have used stringent software engineering attributes as the assessment criteria. We have found that most aspect-oriented solutions improve separation of pattern-related concerns, although some aspect-oriented implementations of specific patterns resulted in higher coupling and more lines of code.

Students' interest in game development often leads departments to attempt to put together a stand-alone game development course. We have used both Unity and Unreal for just such a course. Unity and Unreal are discussed here in the context of how viable they are and how they compare in terms of usefulness for teaching game development. We also present them in context of high level overviews of other game engines and discuss which factors add to a more effective game engine for teaching game development. This paper is intended to help answer some of the questions asked by those without experience in the field who find themselves developing stand-alone game development courses.