Software Design PatternsHow I use them in Unity!

Me!

David Baron- Professional Game Developer- I’ve worked for Ubisoft, Eidos, Gameloft …- Currently specialization is VR / AR

Goals

What I’m covering?

- My observations of the rise of Unity within the indie game industry.

- How developers started integrated design patterns into the scripting engine.

- Only the simplest patterns that I find useful for indie game development.

What I’m NOT covering?

- The exact GoF definitions.

- Source-code or how to implement them.

- There’s people that know this stuff way better than me!

What are design patterns?

History

GoFGang of Four

AAA

C++

C#

LUA

Visual Scripting

Engine Programmer

Gameplay Programmer

Technical Director

Level Designer / Scripter

Core Implementations

Game System Implementations

Exposition & Wrapping

Sequencing & Integration

http://youtube.com/v/qeCDXei7S88

What do I code in Unity?

BehavioursAnimations, cycles, UI, NPCs ...

SystemsMechanics, services ...

ScenariosScene events, flow, paths,

narration ...

ToolsIntegration, debugging,

optimization ...

My rule of thumb

If I don’t recognize it after coding it then it’s not a pattern!

The Anti-Pattern

Spaghetti

Spaghetti- Public GameObject ….

- Reference hell!

- Abusing the inspector.

The Patterns

Singleton

Singleton- Anyways all GameObjects in the scene are

initialized.

- Easy access to an instance.

- But not everything needs to be accessible.

- Too many singles in one room!

Facade

Hide the nuts and bolts!

Facade- I see it being used in a professional contexts.

- Very good solution for exposing complex gameplay systems to scripters.

Managers & Facades- They usually synonyms but not always.

- Having too many managers is like having “too many cooks in the kitchen”.

Adapter

Adapter- I use when I’m in an advanced prototyping

stage but I want to avoid refactoring interfaces to related implementations.

- Adapter makes things work after they're designed.

Exploring

Mediator

Mediator- My biggest challenge is to find elegant ways for

game systems to communicate with each other while staying decoupled.

- The Mediator design pattern is used to handle communication between related objects (Colleagues).

- I NEVER used in production, at least not in an explicit way.

Decorator

Object Pool

References

- Derek Banashttps://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF206E906175C7E07

- Decorator Design Patternhttps://sourcemaking.com/design_patterns/decorator

- Efficient WebVR Development Using the Adapter Pattern in Three.jshttp://hecodes.com/2016/08/efficient-webvr-development-using-the-adapter-pattern-in-three-js/