 |
| Part of a series on the |
| Video game industry |
|---|
Products
|
Related |
Game programming, a subset ofgame development, is thesoftware development ofvideo games. Game programming requires substantial skill insoftware engineering andcomputer programming in a givenlanguage, as well as specialization in one or more of the following areas:simulation,computer graphics,artificial intelligence,physics,audio programming, andinput. Formultiplayer games, knowledge ofnetwork programming is required (the resultant code, in addition to its performance characteristics, is commonly referred to as the game'snetcode by players and programmers alike). In some genres, e.g.fighting games, advanced network programming is often demanded, as the netcode and its properties (e.g.latency) are considered by players and critics to be some of the most important metrics of the game's quality. Formassively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), even further knowledge ofdatabase programming and advanced networking programming are required. Though often engaged in by professionalgame programmers, there is a thriving scene ofindependent developers who lack a relationship with a publishing company.
Professional game development usually begins with agame design, which itself has several possible origins. Occasionally the game development process starts with no clear design in mind, but as a series of experiments. For example,game designerWill Wright began development ofThe Sims by getting programmers to experiment with several ideas.
Programmers are often required to produceprototypes of gameplay ideas and features. A great deal of prototyping may take place during pre-production, before the design document is complete, and may help determine what features the design specifies.
Prototypes are developed quickly with very little time for up-front design and mostly act as aproof of concept or to test ideas. They are not expected to work flawlessly, but are developed to try out new, sometimes exotic, ideas.
Though the programmer's main job is not to develop the game design, the programmers often contribute to the design, as dogame artists. The game designer will solicit input from both theproducer and the art andprogramming lead for ideas and strategies for the game design. Often individuals in non-lead positions also contribute, such ascopywriters and other programmers and artists.
Programmers often closely follow thegame design document. As the game development progresses, the design document changes as programming limitations and new capabilities are discovered and exploited.
During production, programmers may create a great deal ofsource code to create the game described in the game's design document. Along the way, the design document is modified to meet limitations or expanded to exploit new features. The design document is very much a "living document", much of whose life is dictated by programmer's schedules, talent and resourcefulness.
While many programmers have some say in a game's content, mostgame producers solicit input from thelead programmer as to the status of a game programming development. The lead is responsible for knowing the status of all facets of the game's programming and for pointing out limitations. The lead programmer may also pass on suggestions from the programmers as to possible features they'd like to implement.
With today's visually rich content, the programmer must often interact with theart staff. This very much depends on the programmer's role, of course. For example, a3D graphics programmer may need to work side by side with the game's 3D modelers discussing strategies and design considerations, while anAI programmer may need to interact very little, if at all, with the art staff. To help artists and level designers with their tasks, programmers may volunteer or be called upon to developtools and utilities.[1][2] Many of these may be for a specific purpose and can bebuggy due to time constraints (time for development of such tools is often not included in a game's schedule) as well as because they are only for in-house use anyway. Many game tools are developed inRAD languages for quicker development and may be discarded after the completion of the game.
The formalquality assurance testing process, performed by professionalgame testers, begins well into game development. High-budget titles may begin testing with the first playablealpha, while low-budget and casual games might not enter testing until arelease candidate is ready. The programmers' task is to fix errors and bugs as such are discovered by the QA teams.[3]
Final tasks include "polishing" the game, such as programmers fixing occasional bugs—from minor to catastrophic—that may arise during the last phases oftesting.
Game developers may have abeta testing period, but the definition of such varies from developer to developer. Often a beta contains all of the game's features, but may have a few bugs or incomplete content. Few games are given a public beta period, for example, to measure stress tolerance for gameservers.
When the game is deemed complete, it is said to have "gone gold" and is shipped off to the publisher. Depending on circumstances, the publisher may then subject it to its own quality assurance or may begin pressing the game from thegold master.
Once a game ships, the maintenance phase for the video game begins. Programmers wait for a period to get as many bug reports as possible. Once the developer thinks they've obtained enough feedback, the programmers start working on apatch. The patch may take weeks or months to develop, but it's intended to fix most bugs and problems with the game. Occasionally a patch may include extra features or content or may even alter gameplay.
Most modern games take from one to three years to complete. The length of development depends on a number of factors, but programming is required throughout all phases of development except the very early stages of game design.
Like other software, game development programs are generated fromsource code to the actual program (called theexecutable) by acompiler. Source code can be developed with almost anytext editor, but many professional game programmers use a fullintegrated development environment. Once again, which IDE one uses depends on the target platform.
In addition to IDEs, many game development companies createcustom tools developed to be used in-house. Some of these include prototypes and asset conversion tools (programs that change artwork, for example, into the game's custom format). Some custom tools may even be delivered with the game, such as alevel editor.
Game development companies are often very willing to spend thousands of dollars to make sure their programmers are well equipped with the besttools. A well outfitted programmer may have two to three development systems and multiple monitors dominating their office or cubicle.
| Language | Features |
|---|---|
| Assembly | Potentially minimal CPUoverhead |
| C | Widely known, widely portable, numerous APIs, compiles tomachine code |
| C++ | Object-oriented, widely known, numerous APIs, compiles to machine code |
| Java | Object-oriented,garbage-collected, widely portable (via avirtual machine) |
| C#,Visual Basic .NET, etc. | Object-oriented, garbage-collected, interfaces withMicrosoft products |
| Objective-C,Swift | Object-oriented, interfaces withApple products |
| Lua,Python,JavaScript,Tcl, etc. | Familiar syntax, easily embedded in the above languages, often used forscripting |
| Lisp,Pascal,Perl,Smalltalk, etc. | Fringe game languages, although bindings to popular libraries are common |
Once the game's initial design has been agreed upon, the development language must be decided upon. The choice depends upon many factors, such as language familiarity of the programming staff, target platforms, the execution speed requirements and the language of anygame engines,APIs orlibraries being used.
Forpersonal computers, the language selected may be little more than a matter of preference.Language bindings for popular libraries such asSDL andAllegro are widespread,[4][5] and the performance gap between idiomatic code written in moderncompiled languages is negligible.[6][7] The most popular languages are usuallyprocedural orobject-oriented and implemented viacompilers; for example,C,[8]C++,[8][9] andJava.[10] However, developers may take into accountdomain-specific features, such as interfacing with the operating system, and resilience toreverse engineering for online video games.[11] Many games are not written in one language exclusively, and may combine two or more languages; For example,Unity, a popular game engine, has different pieces written in C, C++, andC#.[12]
Forconsoles, the support of the target platform is usually the most considered factor. In the past, video games for consoles were written almost exclusively inassembly due to limited resources in terms of both storage and processing speed.[13] However, as technology has advanced, so have the options for game development on consoles.Nintendo,[14]Microsoft, andSony[15] all have differingSDKs for theirWii U,Nintendo Switch,Xbox One, andPlayStation 4 consoles, respectively.
High-levelscripting languages are increasingly being used as embedded extensions to the underlying game written in a compiled programming language, for the convenience of both the original developer and anyone who would wish tomod the game.Lua is a very popular choice, as its API is written inANSI C and the language is designed to be embedded into other applications.[9][16] Many developers have created custom languages altogether for their games, such asid Software'sQuakeC andEpic Games'UnrealScript.
A key decision in game programming is which, if any,APIs andlibraries to use. Today, there are numerous libraries available which take care of key tasks of game programming. Some libraries can handle sound processing, input, andgraphics rendering. Some can even handle someAI tasks such aspathfinding. There are even entiregame engines that handle most of the tasks of game programming and only require coding game logic.
Which APIs and libraries one chooses depends largely on the target platform. For example, libraries forPlayStation 2 development may not be available forMicrosoft Windows and vice versa. However, there are game frameworks available that allow or ease cross-platform development, so programmers can program a game in a single language and have the game run on several platforms, such as theWii, PlayStation 3,Xbox 360,PSP and Microsoft Windows.
| OS | Vulkan | Direct X | GNMX | Metal |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Windows 10 | yes | yes | no | no |
| Mac | MoltenVK | no | no | yes |
| Linux | yes | no | no | no |
| Android | yes | yes | yes | no |
| iOS | MoltenVK | yes | yes | yes |
| Tizen | in Dev | no | no | no |
| Sailfish | in Dev | no | no | no |
| Xbox One | no | yes | no | no |
| Orbis OS (PS4) | no | no | yes | no |
| Nintendo Switch | yes | no | no | no |
Today, graphics are a key defining feature of most games. While2D graphics used to be the norm for games released through the mid-1990s, mostAAA games now boast full3D graphics, even for games which are largely 2D in nature, such asCivilization III. However, purely 2D graphics have experienced a Renaissance withindie games.[17]
A well establishedpersonal computer platform is Microsoft Windows. Since it came pre-installed on almost ninety percent ofPCs sold, it now has the largest user base.[citation needed] The two most popular 3D graphics APIs for Microsoft Windows areDirect3D andOpenGL. The benefits and weaknesses of each API are hotly debated among Windowsgame programmers.
Currently, the most popularComputing platform is Google Android. Since it comes pre-installed on almost eighty percent ofSmartphones sold, Android has the second largest user base, and increasing. Android usesOpenGL ES &Vulkan (API).
DirectX is a collection of game APIs.Direct3D is DirectX's 3D API. Direct3D is freely available fromMicrosoft, as are the rest of theDirectX APIs. Microsoft developedDirectX for game programmers and continues to add features to the API. The DirectX specification is not controlled by an open arbitration committee and Microsoft is free to add, remove or change features. Direct3D is not portable; it is designed specifically forMicrosoft Windows and no other platform (though a form of Direct3D is used on Microsoft'sXbox, Windows Phone 7.5 smartphones and mobile devices which run thePocket PC operating system).
OpenGL is a portable API specification. Code written with OpenGL is easily ported between platforms with a compatible implementation. For example,Quake II, which uses OpenGL, was ported from Windows to Linux by a fan of the game. OpenGL is a standard maintained by the OpenGL Architecture Review Board (ARB). The ARB meets periodically to update the standard by adding emerging support for features of the latest 3D hardware. In addition, the development tools provided by the manufacturers of some video game consoles (such as the Nintendo GameCube, the Nintendo DS, and the PSP) use graphic APIs that resemble OpenGL. OpenGL often lags behind on feature updates due to the lack of a permanent development team and the requirement that implementations begin development after the standard has been published. Programmers who choose to use it can access some hardware's latest 3D features, but only through non-standardized extensions. The situation may change in the future as the OpenGL architecture review board (ARB) has passed control of the specification to theKhronos Group in an attempt to counter the problem.[18]
For development on Microsoft Windows, the various APIs of DirectX may be used for input,sound effects, music,networking and the playback of videos. Many commercial libraries are available to accomplish these tasks, but since DirectX is available for free, it is the most widely used.
For console programming, theconsole manufacturers provide facilities for rendering graphics and the other tasks of game development. The console manufacturers also provide complete development systems, without which one cannot legally market nor develop games for their system. Third-party developers also sell toolkits or libraries that ease the development on one or more of these tasks or provide special benefits, such as cross-platform development capabilities.
The central component of any game, from a programming standpoint, is thegame loop. The game loop allows the game to run smoothly regardless of a user's input or lack thereof.
Most traditional software programs respond to user input and do nothing without it. For example, aword processor formats words and text as a user types. If the user doesn't type anything, the word processor does nothing. Some functions may take a long time to complete, but all are initiated by a user telling the program to do something.
Games, on the other hand, must continue to operateregardless of a user's input. The game loop allows this. A highly simplified game loop, inpseudocode, might look something like this :
while (user does not exit) check for user input run AI move enemies resolve collisions draw graphics play soundsend while
The loop may be refined and modified as game development progresses, but most games are based on this basic idea.[19]
Game loops differ depending on the platform they are developed for. For example, games written forDOS and many consoles can dominate and exploit available processing resources without restraint. However, games for a modern PC operating system such as Microsoft Windows must operate within the constraints of the process scheduler. Some modern games run multiplethreads so that, for example, the computation of character AI can bedecoupled from the generation of smooth motion within the game. This has the disadvantage of (slightly) increased overhead, but the game may run more smoothly and efficiently onhyper-threading ormulticore processors and on multiprocessor platforms. With the computer industry's focus onCPUs with more cores that can execute more threads, this is becoming increasingly important. Consoles like theXbox 360 andPlayStation 3 already have more than one core per processor, and execute more than one thread per core.
The only platforms widely available for hobbyists to program are consumeroperating systems, such as Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Linux, etc. This is because development on game consoles requires special development systems that cost thousands of dollars. Often these must be obtained from the console manufacturer and are only sold or leased to professional game development studios. However, Microsoft used to distribute a game development framework,XNA, which runs on both Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360. XNA was discontinued, but other projects likeMonoGame andSharpDX are trying to allow the same access for game coding. Lately, Android is the most popular hobbyist platform of choice for mobile developers.[20] Some hobbyists also develophomebrew games, especially for handheld systems ormodded consoles.
Somesoftware engineering students program games as exercises for learning aprogramming language oroperating system.
Some hobbyists may use software packages that help with game development, such asAdobe Animate,Unity,Android Studio,pygame,Adventure Game Studio,Roblox Studio,GameMaker Studio,Godot,Unreal Engine,Pixel Game Maker MV, orConstruct.
