Chapter 4: Game Components

Overview

This chapter talks about the concept behind the Game class and the game components you can add to it. To get your graphic engine up and running in the next chapter you still need some new helper classes before starting with 3D concepts. The BaseGame class is used to implement more features and to include all the other classes you have written so far. It is derived from the Game class to take advantage of all the existing XNA features. In the same way our main test class TestGame is derived from BaseGame to help you execute static unit tests in your game. Then you will add the TextureFont class to your Helpers namespace to allow you to draw text on the screen, which is not possible out of the box in XNA. Finally, you also add some of the existing functionality from the previous chapters such as input, controller handling, and sound output into special classes to make it much easier to write a new game. Instead of just making some general assumptions, this chapter takes the game you are going to develop later in this chapter as a prime example.

In contrast to the previous chapter you are not going to write any helper classes first, but instead you are going to write the unit tests and the game class first and then add all the game components you need to your project. In the last few projects the problems were fairly simple and once you resolved them there was no need to go through them again. For the game you are going to develop in this chapter many improvements can be made and you will see this becomes even more true the bigger the game projects become. Refactoring is still the most important thing you have to remember when working over existing code and improving your game. Sometimes you will even see the code used in the unit tests ending up somewhere else in the final game code.

As an example game a simple Tetris clone is used. It will feature a big play field with colored blocks falling down, support for keyboard and gamepad input, a next block field showing you what comes next, and a little scoreboard containing the current level, score, highscore, and lines you destroyed. If you are a Tetris fan like me and like to play it every once in a while this game is great fun. Tetris is one of the most popular puzzle arcade games ever. It was invented by the Russian Alexey Pazhitnov in 1985 and became very popular ever since Nintendo released it on the Game Boy system in 1989.