What are the most important game programming practices for the Gaming Industry?

Version control is essential in programming, enabling developers to track changes, collaborate seamlessly, backup code, conduct code reviews, experiment safely, and maintain documentation. Overall, version control is essential for streamlining the development process, ensuring code quality, integrity, and enabling effective collaboration in programming projects. Whether working solo or as part of a team, developers rely on version control systems to manage code effectively and deliver high-quality software products.

Version Control is a very powerful system, allows one to keep a neat track of changes. I like to say, always use it, even if you are working alone on the project. If you are working with another person or more, its very highlh recommended too. It helps you track changes efficiently. Great way to backup your projects. Mostly games would not take some time, and the number of iterations to even polish it wouldn't be small, so its a great idea to use such a streamlined flow.

Version control is crucial in game development, offering collaborative workflow, error tracking, and data backup. With tools like Git and SVN, developers can streamline their process, ensuring efficiency and quality in every project.

Understand core game mechanics, use version control (e.g., Git), follow coding standards, optimize performance, implement testing, iterate based on feedback, document thoroughly, continuously learn, focus on UX, and collaborate effectively.

Constant testing and debugging, Code optimization, excellent documentation of the code, applying version control, iterative feedback, constant learning and improvement, understanding the core mechanics/goals, follow design patterns.

Okay. For real. For the love of everything, PROPERLY LABEL YOUR CODE!!!! Put notes under it describing what it is. Make it readable not only to yourself, but your fellow coders, as well as your Project Manager who may not have the time to go through every part themselves. Trust me. The sooner you start organizing and labeling what you code, the better off you will be later down the line as your product expands. Hope this helps!

Adhering to coding standards is paramount in game programming, fostering consistency, readability, and bug prevention. By following established guidelines for naming, formatting, and documentation, developers ensure maintainability and enhance collaboration within their teams. Consistent application of coding standards throughout the development lifecycle is key to producing high-quality, error-free codebases.

Whether you're working solo or in a team, following a coding standard and proper labeling system will make or break the whole project. Even the smallest of games made in a day must have good code as you will return to it later, either to salvage code for another project, or to bring an update to this one. Code that hasn't been following any standard will be a huge pain to read and understand again. And this is even more important when working in a team! Reading someone else's code that hasn't been properly labeled is the worst experience ever. Please save yourself and others from that!

Out of the box insight - read clean code book Robert C. martin - Anyone can write code that computer can understand but good programmers write code that humans can understand - Make sure all the names of variables are meaningful do not name a variable as say - Score & another variable as score it causes a huge commotion . try to use unique names when possible and also telling of what they do - Use interfaces to force a certain functions that must be written for all classes believe me it will slowly setup a standard That is all other contributions are good i just added something different from them

Coding standards are must. Its like how you like to read a book. There should be rules, where you can put punctuation marks, when to start a next line and etc. Similarly while we write code it is always recommended to have a set of standards. Either make one yourself(or with your team) and follow it or simply Google for other coding standards ?? The difference between same piece of code following and not following coding standards can be huge when the codebase starts to grow.

Testing our code DURING programming will save us a lot of time in the long run. Imagine you've tested and debugged partially, not that thoroughly and the game doesn't behave as it should before production? Imagine going back through all that code to fix the problem, how frustrating and stressful can that be? Conclusion: ALWAYS TEST, then proceed, ALWAYS TEST, then proceed ( repeat ?? )

Testing and debugging are indispensable aspects of game programming, ensuring the stability, functionality, and quality of your game. Regular testing and debugging, whether through manual inspection or automated tools, help detect and rectify errors, bugs, and glitches. Incorporating techniques like unit testing, integration testing, and profiling into your development process enables you to identify issues early, leading to a smoother and more polished final product. Ultimately, thorough testing and debugging contribute significantly to a positive player experience and the success of your game in the market.

Testing and debugging is crucial all the time. Anytime you implement a new feature it has to be thoroughly tested against all the possible edge cases. Trying to think of ways to break your own code can also help in improving it, because your players will definitely find different ways that what you planned to interact with the game, so you should make sure everything is as bug-free as possible.

"Write one line of code at max a function and test that " - Its a golden rule - Learn to write unit tests - Learn breakpoint debugging a huge life saver to understand how the data flows in code real-time - Ask chat gpt to explain the output you got for a certain code

Optimizing code is paramount in game development, enhancing performance and user experience while minimizing resource consumption. Strategies such as efficient memory usage, streamlined calculations, and leveraging parallelism are key to achieving optimal performance without sacrificing functionality. By employing these techniques, developers can create games that run smoothly on various platforms, delivering a seamless and immersive gaming experience to players.

Profile your code to identify performance bottlenecks, make changes based on your optimization hypotheses, and profile again to measure the impact. Choose Data-Oriented Design (DOD) over Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) for your entire codebase. DOD's composability allows for more flexible and modular code, while its data-centric approach enables better performance optimization with less effort compared to OOP. By aligning data layout with access patterns and minimizing dependencies, DOD facilitates cache-friendly code and easier parallelization. Adopting DOD from the start ensures a performant and adaptable codebase.

The other contribution talks about " Avoid premature optimization " that is super true - Keep a minimum hardware device goal with min fps eg. we had like iphone 6 as the min target phone on which we wanted atleast 30 fps back in 2019 now the goal is changed to be iphone 10 with 30 fps atleast - Goal helps you optimize the game and allows you to avoid premature optimization

Regarding premature optimization. While it is good to avoid, it's also good to use well known optimizations all the time, even in a prototype. As a very simple example - always multiply by .5 instead of divide by 2. Or, if you're going to spawn bullets implement an object pool/cache right away. I think sometimes too much avoidance of 'premature' optimization can lead to sloppy code. There's nothing wrong with doing it right the first time.

There is a quote about Premature optimization, but this also applies to Premature Abstraction. Code always balances on maintainability, extensibility, performance. Improving one aspect may inadvertently weaken others, so it's crucial to carefully assess the problem and constraints before implementing abstractions. Abstractions should only be introduced where necessary, with patterns naturally arising from a thorough understanding of the problem space and its requirements.

Quite often when implementing a new feature, it goes through a messy code phase to test it out. While this is fine to try out a mechanic, it should be rewritten with clean design patterns before moving on to something else. If you just leave it in its messy state, it will absolutely cause bugs later down the line, that are extremely hard to find and correct. Design patterns are the strong foundation that will make your whole code robust and scale nicely so don't risk building a fragile game that will crash at the slightest problem and decouple your code!

Design patterns are pretty cool. These are like ready made ways of solving certain type of problems. And it is recognized globally. So if you work on a project and use a design pattern, and another developer joins in, it wouldn't be so hard if both of them know about the design pattern you used to grasp the code base and on board quickly. The important part of using design patterns is where to use which design pattern and do you even want one? And there are other questions one should ask themselves before using them. Will it solve the problem?Will it save time? Will it add complexity or reduce it in the long run? Are you working on a short term project? Will you refactor you codebase anytime soon?

Use patterns that give you loosely coupled systems. Because game development involves a lot of ripping out of gameplay systems and replacing them, patterns like facade and message bus make the process faster and reduces the risk involved.

Plan your global state management, where you’ll keep the functionality for any piece of the app that will grab/maintain its data, and send/receive commands to/from the user. This is most likely a singleton, and where it lives is easily accessible by any other code written for the project. However, other forms of state management can exist, such as a simple string of text, which is easily passed around, say, on the web, where it’s parsed back into the game or app.

I can't stress enough the importance of continuous learning and self-improvement. The landscape of game development is forever changing—new technologies, player expectations, and design philosophies emerge all the time. Keeping pace means dedicating yourself to lifelong learning. But here's the kicker: feedback is your best friend. Whether it's from fellow developers or the players themselves, each piece of criticism is a nugget of gold that can push you to refine your skills and your code. Dive into new projects, experiment with cutting-edge ideas, and always iterate on your work.