Process Flow Overview

Although this is not part of the game engine design, we need to look at the typical game application structure and process flow that will employ the engine to provide a framework for the game engine that we will develop. This process flow is based on observations of numerous commercial computer games . The important thing to remember is that the steps in this flow are not hard-and-set requirements. Do not feel bound to include any steps that do not seem appropriate. The implementation of this process for this books example game will be a simple state machine.

We will have five states in our game process:

• Developer splash screen

• Game splash screen

• Options

• Game play

• After action review

There will be one or more triggers. Each trigger controls the transition from one state to the next . These triggers will be a keystroke, mouse click, or timer expiration as appropriate for whichever state is current.