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A Framework for integrating software design patterns with game design

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Conference Paper · April 2019

DOI: 10.1145/3328833.3328871

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A Framework for integrating software design patterns with
game design framework
Nahla H. Barakat
Faculty of Informatics and
Computer science,
The British University in Egypt
Cairo, Egypt
[email protected]

ABSTRACT architectural problems[1]. The concept of design patterns became

Object oriented design patterns (DP) are meant to provide a prominent in late nineties, when introduced by the Gang of four
common structure for solving common software development (GoF) [2].The GoF suggested 23 different DP; divided into three
problems. Applying those patterns is expected to improve the families; in particular, creational, structural and behavioral [2]
software systems maintainability, comprehensibility, and provide patterns. Ever since, several studies have evaluated the effect of
a common language for developers to understand and effectively using those DP in software development. It has been shown that
communicate. However, this was not always the case, where some high quality designs “shared common solutions of common
studies have shown that using design patterns may lead to a problems”[3]. However, other studies investigated the effect of
system harder to maintain and understand and more error prone; using DP on the quality of software in terms of complexity,
as compared to same systems without the use of design patterns. coupling and cohesion, comprehensibility, development time, this
This variation is referred to the features of the system on hand, in addition to the software size; had contradicting outcomes.
and the experience of the developers who are capable to know Some of the studies showed positive effect, while others showed
what design patterns to use and when. Considering the video negative effect of applying design patterns [1, 4].
game development, the use of software design pattern is still at In particular, it was concluded that some systems implemented
low scale, and still; there is no recipe on what and when to use with DP were harder to maintain and understand, and took longer
design patterns. In the meantime, there are different game design time to do modifications than non-pattern versions. The patterns
frameworks that define different aspects which need to be which have been studied and had contradicting results include; the
considered when developing a game. In this paper, we propose a decorator, composite, abstract factory, and visitor DP. Some
framework that integrates some creational and behavioral DP, studies found system with aforementioned DP were harder to
with a specific game design framework. In this way, we claim that maintain and understand, and took longer time to do modifications
the developers will have some hints on what DP to use with the than non-pattern versions [1]. Other studies found that systems
main game aspects. This framework is suitable for games which implemented using some DP had better reusability,
can be developed after the first course of game design, regardless maintainability and took less time to maintain, as some parts of
of the game engine used for development. The framework can be the software can be changed independently of others[4]. However,
extended with more DP, for larger scale and more sophisticated it should be noted here that the use of GoF DPs are not generally
game. bad or good, and the suitability of the DP chosen, to the
application in hand plays an important role in the obtained results.
CCS Concepts From those studies, it can be concluded that there is no recipe on
•Software and its engineering → Software notations and how and what to choose from design patterns for software system
tools → Development frameworks and environments. development. Finding the right software architecture is therefore
dependent on the application developed and the experience of the
Keywords developer, in terms of good understanding of the concepts and the
Software O.O Design patterns; Video games; Game design applications of different DP. In other words “if patterns are used
frameworks; Software maintainability. properly and in appropriate cases, they prove extremely beneficial
regarding systems’ maintainability and comprehensibility”[3, 5].It
1. INTRODUCTION should be noted here that all the aforementioned studies
Object oriented design patterns (DP) are meant to provide a investigated traditional software systems.
common structure for solving real life; common software
Over the last two decades, the video game industry has flourished
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for and became very profitable business. As the result of this huge
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are development is this area, the game software development has
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that
become one of the most important and prominent professions in
copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights
for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be the job market. Furthermore, several good universities offered
honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or under and postgraduate degree specializations and number of open
republish, to poston servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior source game development engines and techniques have been
specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from developed and made available for free. This has fueled very
[email protected]. promising research areas in different directions, including but not
ICSIE 2019, April 9–12, 2019, Cairo, Egypt limited to; gamification and serious games, reinforcement and
© 2019 Association for Computing Machinery. imitation learning based games. However, this research area is
ACM ISBN 978-1-4503-6105-7/19/04…$15.00
still in its beginnings and there is a significant potential for
https://doi.org/10.1145/3328833.3328871
proposing new software development methodologies and
frameworks [6].

47
One drawback is that; due to the expanding markets, and will save the program multiple, unnecessary initializations, which
competition between companies, the time to market has been can be error prone.
shortened, which has lead to a faster development lifecycle. As a
result, and due to the advancement of games’ technicalities and
2.1.2 The Observer design pattern
intelligence; the first versions released for games would possibly This pattern outlines one-to-many dependency between objects,
have some bugs[7] .To upgrade those versions and to facilitate where if an object changes its state, all its dependent objects states
efficient fixing of possible bugs; efficient, well structured are updated automatically. According to GoF, the observer
development methodologies became an urgent and mandatory pattern allows programmers to reuse the subjects independent
need. Therefore, different frameworks for games’ design and of their observers and vice versa[10]. The observer DP can be
development have been introduced[8, 9], which define different used in UI, health bar that must be notified and updated at run-
aspects that should be considered when developing a game. time.
Integrating these frameworks with GoF design patterns would be 2.1.3 The Strategy pattern
really helpful for the purpose of reuse and maintainability [7], The strategy DP, defines a family of algorithms, which are
considering the special, dynamic nature of video games, and the executed interchangeably during the runtime. This can be useful
increasing demand for solving recurrent problems in game in different game contexts, where it can be used to alter artificial
software [7]. However, this integration should take into intelligence behaviors of players, or the weapons they use.
consideration the specialized development methodologies, which
are different from the traditional software development, as well as
2.1.4 The State pattern
the diversity of games components, which need to be handled The state pattern allows an object that its internal state changes to
wisely by skilled designers and programmers. change its behavior accordingly. This pattern is appropriate for
most games and can be also used to animate the players [11].
In this paper, we propose a framework that integrates some
creational and behavioral design patterns, with a specific game 2.2 Formal, Dramatic and Dynamic Game
design framework. In this way, we claim that the developers will Design Framework
have some hints on what DP to use with the main game aspects. Several game design frameworks have been proposed [8, 9].
This framework is suitable for games which can be developed However, they share the main elements, with minor variations in
after the first course of game design, regardless of the game details. We have chosen Fullerton [8] framework, which is one of
engine used for development. The framework can be extended the simplest, yet comprehensive frameworks to build on.
with more DP; for larger scale and more sophisticated game.
The framework has three main families of game aspects: formal,
The rest of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 provides dramatic and dynamic. A summarized description of each aspect
brief background on the selected design patterns and the game is given below:
design framework, which we use on our framework. This is
followed by the related work. In Section 3, a detailed description 2.2.1 The formal aspects:
of the proposed framework is introduced. Section 4 highlights the According to this framework[8], formal aspects include the game
study limitations, where Section 5 provides conclusions and future objectives, which define what the player should achieve, game
perspectives. rules, which define what can or can’t be done by the player, and
how to respond and behave in different situations. Without
2. Background obeying the game rules, the game can’t proceed [8].The player
In this part, the software design patterns[2],and the game design interaction patterns refer to the classification of a game as a
framework [8] which we utilize in our framework are summarized single player or multiplayer. In case of multi players, it states how
in Sections 2.1 and 2.2 respectively. This is followed by the they interact (collaborate, compete, one versus one, etc.). One of
related work in Section 2.3. the most important elements here; is the game resources, which
defines any object of value inside the game, which enables the
2.1 Software Design Patterns player to achieve the game objectives; like (lives, health,
Design patterns are widely used in software engineering, as they
weapons, hints, maps, etc.).There are other formal aspects but are
help developers to understand the design and architecture used in
not included to the current framework[8].
a certain code. In addition, they help to understand the
implemented code itself and to analyze the behavior of this code 2.2.2 The dramatic aspects
at run-time. Software engineers design systems before Dramatic aspects refer in general to the game story and its
implementation using design patterns to ensure that the system characters. It refers to the aspect that adds the emotional
will be reusable, enhance its readability, and simplify the code [1]. dimension of the gameplay, and give a meaning to all formal
Due to the different nature of video games, the proposed elements, therefore; help engaging the player [8]. The game
framework in this paper will include only some of GoF DP[2]; characters are the objects which take role in the game story and
one creational pattern, and three behavioral patterns, namely, the game play.
prototype, state, strategy and observer DP. However, other design 2.2.3 The dynamic aspects
patterns have been utilized in game development in [6]. The dynamic aspects refer to the gameplay and game emergence
2.1.1 The Prototype design pattern [8].The gameplay aspect refers to the integration of game
Prototype design pattern belongs to the creational DP family. The elements that makes them “fit together to form playable
main idea of this pattern is to create new objects from an existing systems”[8].There are other aspects in Fullerton framework[8],
(prototype) object by “cloning” (GoF) [2]. The reason of but we only cited the elements which we build on.
choosing this DP for our framework is that, in many games, it is 2.3 Related work
quite common to need to create game objects with same attributes; The use of GoF design pattern in game development is relatively a
which could be enemies, playing or non-playing characters. This new area of research. However, few studies investigated this

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topic[7, 11, 12]. Kounoukla et al. [12] studied the implementation these studies were done on the micro scale, where examples are
of game mechanics using GoF design patterns, through proof-of- given for certain game situations, and the use of DP on it. Only in
concept. They defined the game mechanics’ elements that can be [12], the authors proposed the use of GoF DP on game mechanics,
candidate for implementation using GoF DP, in the context of with again examples of certain game scenarios. To the best of the
OSS games. The study proposed to use the template method, author’s knowledge, there are no studies proposed the integration
strategy, visitor, composite, state, observer and abstract factory of GoF DP, with any of the game development frameworks.
patterns; for turn based games, AI agents and character Therefore, our proposal will be the first contribution in this area,
movements, power-Ups , the game world, the levels and varied which can work on the majority of games, regardless of its size
game play, game progress indicators, units, game mechanics and the challenges in its implementations. Furthermore, the
respectively [12]. Simple class diagrams have been proposed for selected DP to be added to our framework did not show any
each of those cases. The authors have also reported the number of negative impact on the software quality; when implemented, in
occurrences of each of those patterns in the OSS games, and the traditional or video games software [4, 7].
strategy, state, and abstract factory have been found [12]. Regarding the selected game design framework (Formal,
In another study[7], the authors went a further step and studied the Dramatic, Dynamic), it is one of the most comprehensive, yet
relationship between applying design patterns and the frequency simple and intuitive to understand and implement, regardless of
of game defect, as well as the debugging efficiency. Studying 97 the game size or type [8]. The objective of our framework is to
open source games of various sizes written in java, they selected find a general guidance, when and what to use from GoF DP with
the software that had more than 10 bugs in each of its versions. game development frameworks. This could be very helpful for
Analysis and descriptive statistics have been used. It was designers, as till now, there is no recipe for what and when to use
concluded that “there are certain characteristics of specific design DP with game development.
patterns, which influence defect frequency” [7]. In particular, they
have concluded that the more instances of the DP like composite, 3. Proposed framework
prototype, observer, abstract factory, proxy, state and strategy are The proposed framework builds on Fullerton [8] game design
used, the less the number of bugs found in the game software. The framework; which defines formal, dramatic and dynamic aspects
authors attributed that to the simplicity of those pattern’ structure of a game. The objective is to integrate that framework with part
and implementations [7]. This is not the case for the adapter and of GoF design patterns; namely state, strategy, prototype, and
template method patterns, where the more instances of these observer. However, the framework can be extended to other game
patterns found, the more the number of bugs reported in the design frameworks like [9], as the major components are similar
software [7]. in both, as well as other GoF DP.
Concerning the bug fixing, the authors concluded that some The DPs chosen in our proposal belong to the creational and
patterns are correlated to bug fixing rate, like singleton, adaptor behavioral patterns as suggested by GoF[3], and can work with
and decorator patterns. However, the use of the observer pattern large, complex games, as well as small size game, as the ones
improves the debugging process[7]. developed by students taking the first game design &
development module. Those games normally have at least two
2.4 Study Motivation levels, and each level has at least two scenes. The chosen DPs can
The area of game design and implementation is a relatively new also work with different game engines like XNA or Unity, as well
research area, due to the special nature of games. It has been as the games which are developed from scratch, including the
shown in the literature that using GoF design patterns has positive game engine; but with possibly using more advanced DP.
effect on software maintainability and usability including Furthermore, based on earlier studies; the selected DP for our
games[7, 10, 12]. However, the application of GoF patterns in framework, did not show negative effect on the developed

Game Design Framework

Formal elements Dramatic elements

Dynamic elements
Rules (Game play) Characters
Player interaction patterns
Procedures
Resources

Recommended Design Patterns Recommended Design Patterns

State Prototype
Strategy State
Observer

Figure 1.The proposed framework integrating game design framework and design patterns.

49
 software quality in traditional software applications[4, 7]. As a future extension of this work, a practical study should be
In general, the use of more design patterns with games can relate conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the selected design
to the game size in terms of number of levels, number of players, patterns on the game quality, according to the predefined software
number of enemies, number and type of strategies employed by quality metrics, namely; size, complexity, coupling and cohesion
enemies and players. The game genre has also an effect, where of the developed software.
adventure and strategy games can benefit more from patterns, References
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and can be extended in size and scope.

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