Object Oriented thinking in game development

Object oriented thinking is a way of modelling real world. Objects have attributes and methods. Attributes are variables. There are different kinds of variables and they always have a type. Different types can be, for example, integer, float, double, string and character. I am talking about Java now which is very good programming language for explaining object oriented thinking. Methods are functions of the object.

So different object can have values, such as Person would have height, weight, age and name. Height, weight and age can be numbers and name is a string or combination of characters. For a role playing game you could a Monster that has values like strength and chance to hit for determining if player is hit and how much damage does the player get.

When there’s types of enemies in our little game they have these basic abilities. So we must create instances of classes to generate more enemies that are of the same type. There are many enemies of a type, for example “ghost” or “zombie”. Player can also have abilities like health, armor class and so on. We can build worlds in thinking like this.

To build a game you need many other things than just object oriented programming. You need textures, 3d-models, sounds, music. and logic for the game to exist. So you can begin programming with Java but you must understand that it is a tool that can be used to create something. Plain Java doesn’t do so much. I have programmed a text adventure game. I still think it’s not a full game. It’s more like piece of code that gives you some output for your input. If you are interested in creating games, rather than playing them, I think you should sharpen your skills inside Blender, Unity and graphics design. And these aren’t only tools there can be.

Is virtual reality flopping?

Virtual reality was once said to be the next big thing in console gaming. Years have gone and VR hasn’t gained as much attention as was predicted. This may have something to do with todays graphics as they aren’t yet so realistic. VR as experience falls short. Maybe advancing to PS5 brings some change to this situation.

As VR glasses price is several hundreds of euros it is uncertain that they would bring that extra value to hobbyists gaming experience. Some games that come to mind that are using this feature are Resident Evil 7 and Gran Turismo Sport. Those can be played also without VR functionality.

Game types are yet to form inside this technology. Sony isn’t the only one on the markets as Oculus released their device some years ago. Even companies that have been usually associated with smartphone development are looking to get to this market area. Those include HTC, Samsung and Google. There is also a finnish company Varjo. Valve has been developing VR glasses also. Future tells if increase in graphics processing power brings VR closer to customers.