Where Are My Graphics?

Being completely honest, this is the ugliest way to discuss architecture. There haven’t been any pretty pictures or sounds, no cool animations or input schemes—nothing that indicates that what we have discussed is much more than a bunch of println statements. The main reason this material is presented without all the flash relates back to the car metaphor once again. When buying a car, most people look at the color, check the interior, take a test drive, and maybe listen to the radio. The true power of the car is undervalued. What is meant here is that most people assume the engine works behind the scenes without interaction, beyond providing fuel for those thousands and thousands of tiny explosions happening right in front of the driver. The engine usually isn’t as flashy as the renderer, but when building something from the ground up, building it properly pays off in the long run. Taking this road with the core architectures allows us to break down those components, look them over, put them together, and then build all the pretty stuff on top. The core architecture of a game may not be exciting, but it makes all the rest possible.