Programming, development and optimization techniques to help the programmer to enhance the code of a game

Abstract

This Final Degree Project is based on programming, research and implementation of some techniques that help programmers to optimize their work time and improve the quality of the code in order to make implementations more robust, extensible, easy to understand and which can be adapted to all changes happening in developing a video game. To perform this task, common techniques from other branches of programming will be adapted, such as techniques from web programming or applications, aimed at the development of a full video game project, with all the peculiarities that this has. These techniques can range from test driven development, to several of the best known design patterns. All this will be applied in a practical way in the programming core of a particular game called HIVE, for example, in the game functionality, character’s mechanics, in the development of artificial intelligence and multiplayer system, among many other areas in order to illustrate the utility of these techniques and its benefits for development. This research is motivated to solve one of the problems that appears in the development of some games, it is that a lot of game projects have a strict deadline for the development, and for the game’s life, so it is not a priority the stability and scalability of the code, because games usually have one or two years of life on the market. But, in this moment, there are new online games that can ben replayable for 4 years or more, so, the code needs to be better and easy to maintain for 4 years or more. In sum, development tasks applicable to the context of a specific project called HIVE will be made for this FDP, and also part of the same code can be used in other projects or even in different contexts, like build independent assets for the marketplaces of the game engines.